Far Future 3: Quantum Chaos
by The Fink
Summary: Things are about to get interesting. Trouble for Eric leads to old friends, new friends and a conspiracy that might just bring about the end of the world... [third in the Far Future series first in The Master trilogy NOW COMPLETE]
1. Analysis

Listen very carefully; I shall say this only once...

Disclaimer: Eric, Kimberly, Wes, Jen, Lucas, Katie, Trip, Nadira, Mr Collins, Dr Zaskin and Taylor Earhardt are completely not mine. Alice, Paul Miller and Rob Logan are partially not mine. Ben belongs to Ekat. Everyone else is mine. That which is borrowed is not earning me any money. That which is not borrowed may be, but please ask me first.

Many thanks to Vanessa (beta reader and gopher extraordinaire!) and Jacks (beta reader and cliff-tester). Many, many thanks to Gamine -- beta reader, plotter, co-conspirator and all-round wonderful human being.

Please offer feedback, it tells me how I'm doing. Things are about to get interesting!

~*~

Analysis

The room was lavishly appointed. Piles of cushions and drapes of satin and silk emphasised the hedonistic luxury of the room while the subdued candle lighting gave the surroundings a seductive air.

It was sexy.

**She** felt sexy.

It didn't matter to her that she didn't know where she was or how she'd got there. It somehow didn't seem to be important.

"Alexandria."

She looked up at her name, searching for the speaker. The way he said it made it sound exotic. Beautiful. It made her feel special. 

Her gaze finally found him. He was casually leaning against the wall, his face hidden in the shadows cast by the guttering candlelight. The whole pose gave him a mysterious air.

"You look even more beautiful than I imagined," he continued. "So very, very beautiful."

She felt heat rush to her face and she looked down. "I'm not beautiful."

"But you are." He pushed away from the wall and walked towards her.

"No I'm not. I...I'm not thin...not leggy...not blonde."

"Thin, leggy and blonde doesn't automatically make someone beautiful, Alexandria." He reached her and she felt his fingers gently stroke her cheek. "Yours is not a hollow beauty. Your face is exquisite, but beneath that, your being is stunning."

"I'm just the baby," she murmured, head drooping lower.

His fingers reached her chin and gently forced her head up until she was looking into his face. "You are not just anything, Alexandria, least of all 'the baby'."

"I...I'm not?"

He offered her a smile. "You are so much more than that."

He leaned in but she pulled away, unsure. "That's not what they say."

"Then they are fools." This time, as he leaned in, she didn't pull away. His lips brushed hers. "You are so much more than that." He ghosted another kiss. "You can be so much more than that."

"Tell me how," she found herself murmuring. "What do I need to do?"

"Love me," he answered. "Love me and I will give you the world and the moon and the stars. Love me and I will be your slave."

"Yes."

Lexia's eyes snapped open, heart thudding against her ribcage, breath catching in her chest. Just a dream. She wasn't there...not for real, this time. It was just a...nightmare.

She closed her eyes again and groaned. No, it wasn't for real this time, but it had been real. It had happened. She **had **given in to Mirracon. Even if she had later defied him, she had still given in. Even if she'd defied him and trapped him, she'd still been an accomplice. 

She knew the whole story now; thanks to the way she'd trapped him. Every excruciatingly humiliating detail. Her capitulation to him, her willingness to help, had enabled Mirracon to weave a link between them, and for the four weeks between then and arriving in Mirracon's maze he had been able to leach all manner of information from her. Information he'd used to build his maze. Information he'd used to judge when to attack.

It was her fault.

~*~

Gina sorted the morning's mail and wondered what the day was going to bring. There was a subtle air of anticipation hanging over SGHQ, a slight tension that told her **something** was going to happen. _Like we need any more excitement around here,_ she thought, snorting softly.

"Good morning, Gina."

Gina turned to face the new arrival. "Commander Myers." She smiled. "Early?"

Eric smiled faintly. "Wanted to beat my victims in."

Gina winced as she recalled that Eric was going to be conducting post mortems over what had gone on the previous day. He had stopped by on his way home the previous evening and mentioned it while he waited for Dr Jackson to treat John for a broken wrist. Judging by John's...novel mode of dress, those explanations were certainly going to be interesting. "It's not going to be that bad, surely?"

She watched as he shrugged. "As a whole, no, probably not. As individuals..." He trailed off and shrugged again. "Trouble is," he continued, "I'm not going to know what's the what until I actually have some remote clue as to what the hell actually happened yesterday afternoon."

"I see." Gina offered a smile. "Maybe it won't be as bad as you think."

Eric just lifted his eyebrows. "One word. John." 

"Ouch."

Eric sighed again, shoulders slumping. "It's **not** going to be fun." 

Gina watched as Eric headed into the building and felt a frisson travel the length of her spine. Something was going to happen today. Something big and bad. For a full second, she debated going after Eric to warn him.

_Warn him of what? I have a bad feeling?_ Gina shook her head. And then the hallway door banged shut behind Eric. _Well I can't do it now. Gotta wait until Robin gets here to cover reception..._

Almost as if cued by that thought, the phone started to ring. Gina frowned. It was early for a business call; in fact, the switchboard had only just gone to normal daytime function. Early calls were seldom good news.

Gina's frown deepened as she picked up the call.

"Hi Gina." The voice was hoarse and unrecognisable. "It's Robin."

"Let me guess," Gina answered, "you're calling in sick."

"'Fraid so," the morning receptionist answered between hacking coughs. "I didn't feel great when I went home yesterday...didn't sleep at all last night."

Gina winced. "You sound..." She searched for a polite term.

"Like shit, I know," Robin cut in. "I feel worse. I'm sorry."

Gina smiled faintly. "Not your fault, Robin -- you take yourself off to bed and get some rest, and don't you **dare** try coming in until you feel one hundred percent."

"Yes boss," Robin replied, a faint chuckle lacing her voice, although that led to another paroxysm of coughing.

Gina finished the call and put the phone down and grimaced. That left only three members of the administration team not out sick -- and that was counting both herself and John, who wasn't really a member of the administration team at all! Whatever it was that was going around was vicious.

~*~

Eric made a brief stop in his office to leave his sandwiches on his desk before heading down to the med-centre to get Jackson's report on the assorted injuries of the previous day. _And the worst of this is I know this will be the most fun I have today. It's all down hill from here,_ he mused morosely, descending the stairs.

Maybe Gina was right. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as he feared. Maybe... He shook his head. John had effectively gone AWOL. Lexia, it seemed, wasn't insubordinate only because Taylor gave her consent to Lexia's little escapade. Frax -- or more accurately, the remnants of the Frax clone's Cyclobot army -- had held both Shawn Clingleffer and Paul Jones captive and had done 'things' to them. Clingleffer, in particular, seemed to have been a victim of more future memory tech.

Nope. Whichever way he turned this, there was only one silver lining from yesterday's debacle: No-one was seriously hurt. Eric smiled thinly as he reached the entrance to the med-centre. At least, no-one had seriously been hurt, so far as he knew.

"Commander Myers -- good morning." Jackson seemed to be his usual perky self.

Eric wondered if that was a good thing. "Dr Jackson."

"May I have a word before I hand over the reports?"

Eric felt his heart sink. "Of course."

"About Rick Collins," Jackson continued, leading Eric into the small CMO's office just off the main med-centre.

Eric blinked. "I wasn't aware he was injured yesterday!"

"He wasn't," Jackson replied dryly, the perk leaving his voice now. "What he was, was insubordinate, violent and ill-tempered on a par with Taylor Earhardt on a bad day."

Eric stared at his CMO. "Excuse me? Rick Collins was **what**?" 

Jackson repeated his description, then added, "And I have a lump on my skull to prove it."

Eric felt a migraine coming on. _Not going to be as bad as I thought? Gina, you're right. It isn't. It's worse._

~*~

JJ waited, nervously, in the main conference room, unsure of what, exactly, was going to happen. Also waiting were the other members of Taylor's patrol from the day before, Shawn, Alice, Lexia and Taylor herself, along with the real Paul Jones -- who looked as if someone had kicked him down several flights of stairs at the very least. The final two people in the room, John and Rick, hadn't actually been involved with the patrol but both had somehow become thoroughly mixed up in events, John to the point of getting his wrist broken by Mirracon.

He sighed. He'd have liked to have talked to Lexia about this -- see if she had any more idea of what was going to happen -- but when he'd walked in, she'd been sitting in the corner of the room, giving out serious 'leave me the hell alone' vibes. He'd started to approach her anyway -- if nothing else, he wanted to know what was wrong -- but a movement half seen out of the corner of his eye had stopped him. Looking round, he'd seen Rick shaking his head, the implication clear: Lexia was better left alone for now.

At that point in his thoughts, however, the conference room door opened to admit Commander Myers. Shelving his thoughts, JJ turned his attention to the here and now.

Myers moved to stand at the front of the room. "This is a relatively informal proceeding. This is not a disciplinary hearing; at this point all I want to do is establish exactly what went on yesterday afternoon. Things were far from SOP yesterday and people got hurt. I want to make sure that the same mistakes don't get made again at some point in the future." Myers leaned against the edge of a convenient table. "Any questions so far?" No-one moved. "OK. Commander Earhardt, you want to get this under way?"

~*~

The plaza was crowded. Perfect cover, Namir decided. The busier the location, the harder it would be for The Master to learn anything from this meeting. He shivered. It seemed so wrong for him to be thinking like that. He was only ten! Except that as far as the outside world was concerned, he was in his early twenties, and except that he had information floating around in his head that no ten year old had any business knowing.

He gave a grimace and did his best to dismiss that train of thought. It served him nothing, particularly at this moment in time. He was supposed to be keeping an eye on things here. He was his mother's ace in the hole, in case this meeting went wrong; and the beauty of his presence was The Master had no clue what he looked like.

Namir allowed himself a small smile. _That's what you get for giving someone intimate knowledge of covert work and spying. You create the perfect undercover operative._

At that point in his thoughts, he saw his mother enter the plaza. It didn't surprise him to note that she was being tailed. Chances were she knew already, but... A smile crossed his face as he stood up and started moving not towards his mother, but towards the tail. The plaza was **very** crowded...

Coolly, he walked into the tail -- a man in his mid-forties; balding, paunchy, a face that was completely forgettable. The perfect tail, in fact.

"Oh -- I'm sorry! I'm such a klutz!" Namir exclaimed, injecting just the right note of apology into his voice when he was actually nothing of the sort.

"No problem." The man was terse and not even discreetly attempting to spot his target. Namir had to buy his mother a little more time to meet up with her old friend.

_Not a problem._ In an effort to disentangle himself from his victim, Namir contrived to trip the older man, sending them both to the ferrocrete plaza floor. They grappled for a few moments. He managed to surreptitiously land a couple of blows to the man even as he very ostentatiously attempted to extricate himself.

By the time they were both back on their feet, Namir knew his mother and her friend were long gone. _Good._ The man looked livid.

"I'm so..."

"Ah skip it." With a blood-vessel-bursting snort, the man turned on his heel and walked away.

Namir snickered to himself.

Some days, it was good to be him.

~*~

Just once, Eric mused, it would be nice for these things to actually unravel as simpler than they looked. Unfortunately, having heard Taylor's report of events -- with input from Shawn, JJ, John and a strangely subdued Lexia (and that was something that was bothering him for a whole bunch of reasons) -- it just got more complicated.

"OK." He looked around the room. "I still have a few questions that I want to clear up, but that's going to be best done individually. Rick -- you're first." 

Rick looked less than enthusiastic. 

~*~

"Katie, what's going on?" Lucas asked as she all but dragged him into the botanical gardens adjacent to the plaza she'd arranged to meet him on.

She sighed. "It's complicated -- just...make like you haven't seen me in a long time and hug me."

Lucas blinked in surprise. "Um..."

Before he could say any more, Katie had wrapped her arms around his neck in a near-strangulatory embrace. "I've been followed," she whispered. "Namir's probably taken care of it, but we need to make this look as if all we're doing is catching up or talking about old times." Louder she added, "It's so good to see you!"

"And you," Lucas responded, knowing a cue when he was handed one. "I hope you're going to explain this," he added softly as she released her hold.

~*~

Rick shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat as Eric sat down behind his desk, wondering just what this was about.

"I appreciate," Eric began, "that you felt Shawn Clingleffer had information that was needed by me." 

Rick felt his stomach drop. Suddenly, he knew what this was about and he wished he was anywhere but in Eric's office.

"What," Eric continued, oblivious to Rick's discomfiture, "I would like to know is why you considered knocking the CMO of the Silver Guardians unconscious was your best course of action."

Rick squirmed.

"A man," Eric continued ruthlessly, "who out ranks every single Guardian, including me, when it comes to medical matters."

Rick squirmed again. He could feel his face getting hot now.

"So. Do you have an explanation?"

And before he could quite stop himself, Rick blurted, "Alice."

There was moment of crystal clear silence. Then, so slowly and to Rick's horrified gaze, Eric's eyebrows lifted.

"Alice is not an explanation."

Rick wondered if it was possible to die of humiliation. If it was, it was clearly going to be a long and lingering death. "No sir," he finally managed to mumble.

"So...?"

Rick's head dropped, completely unable to meet Eric's gaze. "I...was worried. 'Bout Alice."

"You were worried about Alice."

"Yes, sir," Rick mumbled.

"Personal fears make it all right to render a superior officer unconscious?"

"No, sir."

There was a lengthy pause. Rick risked looking up again and realised Eric was regarding him thoughtfully.

Whatever Rick imagined the next words were going to be, they certainly weren't what he heard. "You like her, don't you."

"Yes." There didn't seem to be a lot of point in denying it, even if Eric's statement was a non sequitur.

"Then here's a question for you: What happens if, because of what you did yesterday, you aren't in a position to help her when she **really **needs it?"

Rick hadn't thought it was possible to feel worse.

He was wrong.

~*~

"It's been so long," Katie gushed enthusiastically. "We really should have stayed in touch better, but what with my husband's job and my son suddenly growing up...it's been difficult."

The oblique reference to Namir made Lucas wince. Another lost childhood. He hadn't known about Namir until after Alice, Rick, John and Lexia had been abducted -- by which time; it was too late to warn Eric and Kimberly, and Wes and Jen. It still felt like a failure on his part. "Well, things have been hectic on my end, too. But when Trip said you wanted to see me I knew I had to do my best to make time."

Katie smiled and linked arms with him as they started to wander through the gardens. "Alan and I are being watched twenty-four/seven," she murmured softly. "Nam's the only one of us who can move freely...and that's..."

"Only because of what was done," Lucas finished equally softly. He made a vague gesture in the direction of some of the flora, as though that was what they were discussing. "Rob and Ven are nearly set. You'll be safe soon."

"Right now, it's not us I'm worried about."

~*~

Eric folded his arms and stared across his desk at John. What to say? The plaster cast that was visible around John's left wrist was a reminder of what had gone on. 

JJ's interview had confirmed the details what John had actually done in the mirror world -- and from that perspective, Eric had no complaints. John had done the right thing. Except that it had been totally wrong. John shouldn't have been there at all. And the whole mess sounded like something Eric would have done when he'd been John's age.

Hm. Perhaps that was how to start. "You keep telling me," said Eric, "that you're not me." John looked bemused. "So stop trying to be me."

"Huh?"

"John, you're right," Eric admitted. "With the scores you got in the assessments...if you'd been anyone else, I would have very probably classed you as fully trained and put you straight onto the active roster..."

"You **have** been victimising me," John cut in hotly, his temper flaring.

"No!" Eric made a dive for his own temper. Nothing would be served if he lost that. "Not the way you're thinking." Eric paused, hunting for the right words. "You didn't pick out this as a career choice and I don't want to force you into it. I want to give you alternatives. Other things you can be good at..."

"Things that I'm not going to get compared to you over," John finished, anger bleeding rapidly into sheepishness. "Hence the office management and field medicine."

"No," Eric corrected, "hence one of them. You're doing both because you spent twenty minutes arguing over it." John opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. Eric simply nodded. "As for yesterday..."

"Is this the part where you tell me you're not angry, just disappointed?"

Eric sighed. "Not exactly, John. I am disappointed -- but I am also very, very angry. What you did was extremely stupid and it could very easily have got you killed."

"I know." John's answer was meek and thoroughly embarrassed. Eric just hoped the tone indicated he'd finally got through to his son.

~*~

Katie steered them away from the carefully planted 'forest' towards the 'genuine' wildflower meadow. The open space made her less nervous that someone would somehow overhear her.

"What do you mean, Kate?" Lucas asked.

"Alan's been looking at everything that's been done so far. Nam's been collecting information -- he's worked his way into the network...he figures that if he's been given those skills he might as well use them." Lucas nodded. "And there's the info that you gave us."

"He's found a pattern?"

"He isn't sure." Katie swallowed.

"But...?"

"I think he's right about this."

"Katie, what's he found?" Lucas asked.

But before she could answer, his bleeper sounded. Unclipping the device, he looked at the screen and Katie could only watch as his face paled.

"I have to get back to SGHQ," he finally said. "Temporal Investigations have just pulled a real shit-turn."

Katie felt sick. "Someone's being charged with endangering the timeline." Lucas nodded. "We're too late."

"Not yet we're not."

~*~

Eric studied Lexia. There were deep shadows in her expression. Shadows that hadn't been there the day before -- and arguably shouldn't be there now. Something very strange had gone on the previous afternoon -- JJ's interview had made that clear, and Shawn's interview had only added to that.

"Lexia..." But Eric got no further as the sounds of a scuffle reached his ears. Instead of his carefully planned speech, he said, "Excuse me."

He stood up, frowning, and crossed to the office door, but before he could open the door, it imploded inwards. Reflexively, he ducked out of the way, avoiding the shower of matchwood.

"What the hell...?"

Standing in the now gaping doorway were two men who both had the build of professional wrestlers and who wore the expressions of Military Policemen who'd been asked to complete a particularly odious assignment. Dumb and Dumber, Eric mentally dubbed them.

"Who the..."

"Eric Myers?" cut in Dumb curtly.

The temper outburst that he'd restrained while talking to John returned. It took Eric every effort not to snap, "Yes? You are?"

"Lieutenant Bunton, Time Force Temporal Investigations."

Dressed in standard, twenty-first century clothing, there was nothing about them that said they were anything other than hired thugs, and for all that, Eric wasn't surprised -- even if he didn't recognise the department name. "And I presume you have an excellent reason for destroying my office door?"

"You're under arrest," Dumber contributed. "You will come with us, now."

* * *

_TO BE CONTINUED..._


	2. Arrest

Arrest

Eric stared at Bunton and his cohort, wondering if he'd heard them right. "Excuse me?"

Bunton's expression darkened further. "You're under arrest, come with us."

"I don't think so, buddy," Eric retorted. "You have no jurisdiction here."

Bunton's cohort smiled. "That's where you're wrong, Captain Myers. You're a member of Time Force..."

"More to the point, Lieutenant," snapped a crisp voice, "he is a member of my department, and a citizen of this time period. As such, any charges have to go through me."

It took Eric a moment to actually recognise Lucas' voice, and a moment more before he realised that Lucas was genuinely standing in the antechamber that served as Gina's office.

"Lucas, what the hell's going on?"

Lucas smiled grimly. "It's a long story -- you'd probably best get Wes and Jen here, and whoever is your second in command. Ben, is it?"

Eric stared. "You're not seriously..."

Lucas stalled him. "Not if I can help it, but I need to cover everything."

"Major Kendall," blustered Bunton, finally recovering the powers of speech.

"Major Kendall nothing," Lucas snapped. "You and Tweedle Dee there can keep your mouths shut until I give you leave to talk again." Bunton's mouth closed with a snap. "Eric?"

Eric slowly shook his head. This was definitely in the category of days not to bother getting out of bed for. He turned back to Lexia, who had been watching what had been going on wide-eyed and silent. "Lex -- think your mom and Ben are both in their offices along the hall..." Eric trailed off as he realised Wes was attending a meeting at the main Biolab complex, but Lexia was already on her feet.

"Yes, sir."

Lexia looked scared as she left the office, which was understandable, Eric knew. It was never fun to be in a room that gets its door kicked in, and Bunton was definitely not the nicest of guys, either. The strange thing was that she also looked slightly relieved. That, Eric suspected, had nothing to do with current events and everything to do with wanting to avoid the conversation they had been going to have. Which worried him. _What on earth's she hiding?_ he wondered.

"Major Kendall," Bunton tried again, bringing Eric's mind back to the here and now.

Lucas rolled his eyes. "I'd gag him, but he'd still make a noise," he muttered. To Bunton he added, "Which part of keep your mouth shut do you have a problem with, Lieutenant?"

Bunton subsided.

Eric shook his head. "You might as well come in and sit down."

~*~

Shawn gazed out of the window, trying to put his thoughts into some kind of order, but it was a struggle. This time yesterday, he'd barely felt like himself. He'd been confused and defensive, knowing that something had happened to him yet not knowing what or when, feeling as if the Silver Guardian hierarchy was out to get him. And now...he understood. More, the hierarchy understood. Or Eric Myers did, at any rate.

Which was weird because if Shawn had put money on it, he'd have said Myers would have been the last person to 'get' this.

"Penny for them?" Shawn blinked and found Taylor standing over him. She offered him a smile. "OK?"

"I'd kill for a cigarette," he admitted.

Taylor stared. "You quit!"

Shawn offered a sheepish grin. "And then Frax...or whoever it was...messed with my head."

Taylor nodded. "Fair point." She paused. "And are you gonna quit the SGs?"

He looked back out of the window, although the details of the view escaped him. "Commander Myers suggested I don't make any decisions until I've figured out how I feel about things."

"Good advice." 

Shawn sighed and met her gaze again. "But I already know what I'm going to do." At that, Taylor's eyebrows rose. "I was ready to leave yesterday morning. I'm still ready to leave now. I just understand why, better." She opened her mouth to object. "And don't give me the 'quitter's speech' again."

"You haven't quit yet..."

"Actually," Shawn answered with a faint smile, "I tended my resignation to Commander Myers when my interview finished."

Taylor looked floored. "Why?"

Because it's the right thing to do." Taylor looked as if she'd object. "Look at it this way. At the moment, the only people who know that anything happened to me are in this room, or are Commander Myers. You know...at least, I think you know that whatever it was that Frax...whoever did, it didn't work. But outside of this room and Commander Myers, the rest of the Guardians I work with...some of them," he amended, "are going to hear about this -- it's the sort of thing that sneaks out on the grapevine. And there's going to be some who don't believe that it went wrong. Some are going to believe that I let it happen. Some are going to believe that I was somehow the reason all this," and he gestured at the room as if to encompass the last thirty-six hours, "happened. They aren't going to be able to trust me and with what we do...what this job entails..."

"That's bullshit," Taylor retorted.

"No it's not," he replied calmly. "It's human nature. I know that. So does Commander Myers." Not that Myers had said it in so many words, there was just something about the way Myers had accepted his reasoning. As if it was a situation he'd been in himself -- or as if he'd known a similar situation. Shawn knew he was speculating wildly, but it seemed to fit.

Taylor looked nonplussed. "He's accepted your resignation?"

Shawn smiled again. "Yep." He gestured towards his ankle, which was swathed in plaster. "My contract was up in two weeks. I'm not going to be fit for any kind of active duty for three. So pending release from Dr Jackson's tender mercies..."

"You're already finished," Taylor finished, grimacing. 

"That's about the size of it," Shawn agreed. "Look at it this way. I'm one less insubordinate, mouthy son-of-a-bitch to annoy the hell out of you."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "I do not think that. What I do think is that you're making a huge mistake."

Shawn shrugged. "Maybe I am."

"You're letting Frax...whoever...win."

"Maybe. You're not going to get me to change my mind."

Taylor sighed and shook her head. "OK. Fine. I'll stop arguing."

Shawn snickered. "That'll be the day, boss."

~*~

Lexia frowned as she headed back towards conference room one having delivered her message to both Ben and Jen. Part of her was glad for the stay of execution as far as her interrupted interview with Eric was concerned -- the interruption gave her more time to work out what she was going to tell him. Part of her was concerned by what had interrupted the meeting -- what Bunton had been saying didn't sound good to her in the slightest. The rest of her was occupied by trying to decide how best to put off JJ and John.

On balance, she decided, most of her mind was occupied by what to say to JJ. Given the overblown case of ego he'd been suffering from ever since they'd become Guardian Cadets, John was best ignored, but JJ... She grimaced as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She'd been enjoying his company in Mirracon's maze, and he had **said** he'd ask her out...but that was before.

Before she'd found out. Before he'd found out there was something 'weird' about her -- and there was no two ways around it, that stuff she'd done to Mirracon and to get them back was weird.

Either he flat out wouldn't want her or he'd want an explanation. And when she gave **that** he definitely wouldn't want her.

No way he could want her.

No way anyone could want her.

"Lexia?"

Lexia blinked. For a moment, her vision swam and the face before her was that of Mirracon. The hallucination faded as quickly as it had come, revealing the person to be Gina.

"Lexia, what's wrong?" Gina looked concerned.

"Nothing."

But Gina wasn't buying that. "If 'nothing' was wrong, you wouldn't be looking as if the whole world was out to get you."

"Nothing," Lexia insisted. "Honest."

Gina just gave Lexia a 'how dumb do you think I am' look. "C'mon."

Before Lexia could protest, she found the head of the administrative team had gripped her by the wrist and was rapidly towing her in the direction of the canteen. 

"Mrs Miller, I..."

"Gina," Gina retorted. "I'm going to buy you a cup of coffee or hot chocolate...which ever you'd prefer, then we are going to go have a talk." The tone was friendly but firm, brooking no argument.

Lexia sighed. From the frying pan of Eric Myers' office to the fire that was his PA. _So much for a stay of execution..._

~*~

There was a stony silence pervading Eric's office. It hung, thickly, on the air like Los Angeles smog, Ben decided, and was probably just as toxic. The two Time Force officers he hadn't met before, Lieutenant Bunton and Lieutenant Chisholm, were glaring viciously in the direction of the one he had met before, Lucas. Jen was glaring at all three of them, although the glare Lucas was receiving was definitely toned down. Eric was regarding the trio with mixed amusement (although what was humorous about having an arrest warrant out, Ben wasn't sure) and annoyance.

"How much longer have we got to sit here?" Chisholm finally ventured

"Until Captain Wesley Collins arrives," Lucas snapped shortly.

"He's arrived," announced Wes from the doorway.

Ben glanced up at the voice, then did a double take as he realised that not only was Wes standing in the ruined entrance, but his father too.

"Who the..." began Bunton.

"I'm not sure..." began Lucas.

"Sir, you don't..." began Eric.

Mr Collins lifted an eyebrow, quelling all three. "Eric is, at the end of the day, an employee of mine. More, he is a friend of mine. As such, he deserves my support in this."

The trio of reactions entertained Ben. Bunton and Chisholm, predictably, looked mutinous. Lucas looked slightly amused and wholly unsurprised. Eric briefly looked stunned, although you had to have been very quick and know him very well to have spotted that, before his expression settled into impassivity. That last didn't fool Ben -- nor, at a quick glance at Mr Collins, was it fooling Wes' dad. Eric was pleased to know he had Mr Collins' support.

"OK. If we're all here now," said Lucas, "we should get to business." Bunton opened his mouth. "Did I tell you to speak?" Bunton subsided.

"Should have gagged him," Jen muttered. "I remember him from the academy. Slimy little bastard then and he's not improved any."

The tone of voice Jen used, icy cold, shocked Ben. He didn't think he'd ever heard Jen sound this angry before. To judge from Wes' wince, he **had** heard his wife sound this annoyed. Absently, Ben wondered when that would have been.

Lucas, for his part, simply gave Jen a look.

"So does anyone actually want to tell the accused over here what it is he's supposed to have done?" Eric asked, neatly preventing more wrangling.

Lucas gave a nod. "You're being charged with several temporal felonies," he answered, "which culminate in a charge of Endangering the Timeline."

"Want to run that by us with the help files?" Ben asked before anyone else could say anything. "The words were English, but..."

Lucas nodded again. "Endangering the Timeline means pretty much exactly that. You're being accused of having done something that **could** potentially upset the 'preferred' timeline." Lucas rubbed his face with a hand. "The temporal mechanics behind the charge are complicated."

"And again," said Eric, "what am I supposed to have done?"

"It's to do with Kim's use of the Quantum Morpher," Lucas answered.

"Kim's **what**?" said Wes, surprise written large across his face.

"That was ten years ago!" exclaimed Jen. "Of all the ridiculous..." Words apparently failed her, although she turned her glare up in the direction of Bunton and Chisholm.

"I had a freaking broken leg, there was a serious threat to the freaking timeline in this Goddamn century...would someone mind telling me what the hell else I was expected to do?" Eric asked. 

Ben was impressed at the restraint. Eric was clearly livid.

Lucas held up his hands. "I know, I was there. If nothing else, I remember having a conversation about plaster casts and how much they itched. Made me seriously glad to live in a century where med-tech is rather more advanced than that." He sighed. "Unfortunately, by the letter of the law -- and by the letter of your contract with Time Force..."

"You have a contract with Time Force?" said Ben only a shade before Mr Collins said much the same thing.

"Only way to keep the morphers in this century," said Wes. "Long story. Not..."

"Um -- actually it wasn't," said Lucas.

There was a long, painful silence.

"What do you mean 'it wasn't'?" Jen asked.

"When Alex...was killed," Lucas explained, "I was promoted into his job." Ben frowned. This wasn't exactly news. "Which meant I had automatic access to all of his files, which included a mission brief from the director of Temporal."

"Which said...?" prompted Wes.

"That at all costs, Eric Myers had to remain in Silverhills."

"When were you planning to leave?" asked Mr Collins, looking puzzled.

"Long time ago," Eric answered tersely. "Roughly ten years. Very long story. Lucas, what did that son of a bitch **do**?"

"Basically," Lucas replied, "he went to the high-ups -- the Time Force bigwigs -- and talked them into formally contracting you, in particular, and Wes and Jen as a side bar, as official Time Force officers."

Eric stated open mouthed, saying nothing.

"You mean," Jen finally managed, "that the whole thing. The contracts, the morphers being returned to the future...that was Alex bullshit?"

Lucas nodded. "Afraid so."

"It's just as well," said Wes, "that Alex is dead, because otherwise, I might just be tempted to kill him myself."

"Not if I beat you to it," Eric retorted. "I **knew** it was a mistake. I **said** it was a mistake. How could I have been so **fucking** stupid..." And he lapsed into a string of profanity that was both extensive and anatomically questionable.

This was the Eric Ben knew well, although it had been a very long time since Ben had heard and seen him this angry -- and it was hard to judge who he was angrier with. Alex for his machinations or himself for falling for them.

"What you're saying," Eric finally finished, "is that I am screwed courtesy of Alex."

Lucas shook his head. "No."

"Hands up anyone who's confused here," Ben murmured.

"Lucas, you're not making sense," said Wes. "You just said..."

"What I started to say," said Lucas, "was that it was against the letter of the contract. Given the circumstances, and given Kim had Alex's tacit approval -- and yes that matters, since he was, at the time, head of the department you're contracted to -- only an anally retentive idiot would be pursuing this."

"Got two candidates right here," Jen muttered, tossing off another glare in Bunton's direction.

"So if it's this ridiculous and this belated," said Mr Collins, "why on earth is it being brought now?"

Ben thought Lucas mumbled, "Round two," but he wasn't sure.

"Lucas?" Wes prompted, when Lucas made no move to actually answer.

"It's complex," Lucas replied. "And I'm not one hundred percent sure on some of it."

"Lucas, stop dodging the issue," Jen retorted.

"There seems to be some sort of conspiracy going on within Time Force," he replied. "I think, events of the last four weeks bear that statement out."

"You mean Frax and the kids," said Eric.

"Amongst other things," Lucas agreed.

"This is absurd," Bunton broke in. "There is no such conspiracy! Captain Myers is under arrest and it is my job to bring him forward to trial."

"Bunton," Lucas snapped, "check the offence list you should be carrying -- assuming your boss is having this done by the book, and I'd be delighted if he wasn't because that would give me one more thing to fry him over -- and look at the dates and times of the 'transgressions'. The vast majority of them are ten years old. If you have a brain cell to spare, what does that suggest to you? Because what it suggests to me, and what it suggests to everyone else in this room is that someone has a grudge."

Bunton blinked. "You can't talk to me like that!"

"On the contrary," said Mr Collins dryly, "I do believe he just did."

Bunton's face turned red but before he could say anything, Chisholm broke in, "Not all of the offences are that old. In fact, only one of them is." He produced a datapad. "The primary charge is ten years old, but the secondary charge, another serious temporal violation, is less than six weeks' old."

"Let me guess," said Eric dryly. "That would be Kim taking up the Pink Chrono-morpher."

"Yes," Chisholm agreed. "In part. The other part...the main part...relates to Dr Zaskin's experiment that enabled your wife to hold the Chrono-morpher."

"So why isn't Zaskin under arrest?" Wes wanted to know.

"Don't encourage them!" Mr Collins muttered.

"Because Zaskin has no legitimate ties to Time Force," Lucas replied, resignation in his voice. "Eric is Zaskin's boss..."

"I think Michael would debate that," murmured Jen.

"...or seen as." Lucas groaned. "Damn."

"Damn?" Eric's impassive expression wavered. 

"Damn is not good, Lucas," said Wes.

"No, damn isn't good," Lucas agreed. "Chisholm -- may I see that datapad?" Silently, Chisholm held the device out. "Thanks." 

Silence descended. Ben watched as Lucas read and couldn't help but notice that Lucas' expression was getting more and more alarmed.

"They can't be serious."

"Lucas, what have they said I've done?" Eric asked.

"According to that rap sheet, by taking on Frax and winning, then by including the kids in the Silver Guardians, you've upset several strands of future history. Nothing irreparable, but dangerous enough to warrant being called to task." Lucas handed back the datapad. "It's bullshit. I know it is. Hawking had unofficially confirmed that much to me before he was mysteriously sacked and replaced. Unfortunately," and Lucas' shoulders sagged, "I can't countermand this order."

There was a stunned silence.

"Why is Eric the one carrying the can for me allowing Kim to use my morpher?" Jen finally asked. "It was my decision...well, mine and Kimberly's."

Lucas shook his head, anger rapidly replacing the shock that had been his initial reaction. "I don't know. Even Director Kerin isn't Neanderthal enough to believe that husbands are responsible for their wives' actions. What I **do** know is that, with a little help from Kim, I can get this straightened out. Can and will." 

"Good. I'll call Kim and..."

Lucas held up a hand, stopping Eric in mid sentence. "There's a downside."

"Anyone surprised, please raise your hand now," Ben murmured.

"Which is?" Eric asked.

"You're going to have to go with Tweedle Dum and Lieutenant Chisholm for the time being."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Inquire

Inquire

Kimberly entered the SGHQ car park humming softly to herself. Given what had occurred the day before, she'd decided to spring lunch on Eric as a way of lightening the day. She knew he'd been dreading the post mortems on Mirracon's machinations -- particularly given John's role in the whole affair -- so a little R&R would definitely do him good. It would also tell her if she needed to be prepared for trouble with John later in the day.

__

I know Eric won't mean to upset John, Kimberly mused as she climbed out of her car and headed into SGHQ. _But it seems to happen anyway. He says something; John snaps then Eric snaps back and bam._ She sighed. Not for the first time, she wished she could get her hands on Frax and his boss.

"Mrs Myers!"

The exclamation from the receptionist startled Kimberly from her thoughts. Looking up, she didn't see Robin Helm, the standard morning receptionist. Instead, the person sitting at the reception desk was a bespectacled, chubby looking woman Kimberly had never met before. "Um? Where's Robin?"

"Called in sick." The woman grimaced. "Gina and I are the only two admin people not out sick now."

Kimberly blinked. "What the hell?"

The woman shrugged. "I don't know. Anyway. Commander Myers asked me to call you -- wanted to ask you to come down here."

Kimberly blinked again. "What? Why?"

The woman shrugged again and pushed her glasses up her nose. "I don't know. I was just about to phone you. Guess you've saved me the call."

"Guess I have," Kimberly answered, frowning. "I'll go on up, then?"

The woman nodded. "By all means."

Kimberly nodded in return and headed into the building proper, wondering just what was going on.

~*~

Rick looked at Alice. "What do you think?"

"About John?" she answered. "Not a lot." Rick lifted an eyebrow. "Honestly, Rick, you didn't have to spend all weekend listening to him and dad argue."

"No." Rick sighed and nodded in John's direction. "But he looks like he could use a friend right now." And there was no denying that statement, Rick mused. John's face had the single most hang-dog expression Rick had ever seen.

Alice sighed. "What am I? Your conscience? Who'm I to say you shouldn't go over there and talk to him. I just don't happen to think he's in anything other than deserved trouble."

Rick smiled at that. "No arguments about that here. I just thought, you being his sister and everything..."

"Thought you wanted to cheer him up," Alice cut in, a smirk now gracing her face. "Go -- talk to him. Maybe you'll have better luck than mom'n'I've had."

"Yes ma'am, leader, ma'am."

Alice swatted at him and grinned, but as the halfhearted slap connected with his shoulder, he felt something more. For the briefest millisecond -- or perhaps the longest -- her hand stayed against his shoulder. It was just a moment, barely long enough for him to draw a breath, but it seemed to crystallise something for him. More so than even his hasty blurting had done in Eric's office. 

Then Alice ducked her head in embarrassment, withdrew her hand and the moment was over. "Go...um..."

"Yeah."

So dismissed, Rick crossed the room to talk to John, conscious of the feeling at the back of his mind that at some point soon, he and Alice were going to have to talk. And properly talk as opposed to the bantering they'd previously been used to. _And that,_ he decided, _is infinitely more terrifying than even what I said to Eric!_

"Hey," said John, sparing him any more musings. "What did dad say to you?"

Rick found himself turning red in embarrassment. Alice hadn't asked him about it...which was probably just as well. "Um...I sorta laid Jackson out."

John's expression was almost identical to the one he'd received off Eric, only somehow it looked more quizzical this time round and a lot less threatening. "**You** laid out Jackson?"

Rick shrugged awkwardly and came to perch on a convenient table. "He wasn't going to let Shawn come back to the warehouse any other way." The expression on John's face said everything. "I know." Rick shrugged. "It was dumb and your dad left me with that in no uncertain terms."

"Dad would," John murmured, looking down.

"What did he say to you?" Rick asked.

"What didn't he?" John answered, studying his fingers as if they were the most fascinating things he'd ever seen. "I did something beyond incredibly dumb yesterday and he's pissed at me over it." There was a pause. "And he's probably right about it, too."

"Why did you do it? I mean, you had to know he was going to be annoyed. And," Rick added, "he was **steamed** when he found out you'd vanished." John mumbled something. "Huh?"

John sighed. "Does it matter? I did it, I'm now in hot water, let's just drop it. 'Kay?"

"John?"

John just shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

~*~

Whatever Kimberly had been expecting to find in Eric's office, it certainly wasn't what she found. Ben's presence wasn't so unusual. Nor was Wes', or Jen's. But Wes' father's presence was a surprise, and if that was a surprise, realising Lucas was also physically in the office was a shock. And not a pleasant one. Not that Kimberly disliked him; just that she realised his being here meant things had gone from bad, through worse to absolutely disastrous.

"That was quick," commented Jen.

"I was just walking through the door when the girl on the reception desk was starting to ring me," Kimberly replied absently. "And what is with all your admin staff being out sick?"

"There's a nasty bug going round," Wes answered. "Lot of the Biolab staff are out sick with it too."

"Same with the Guardians," Ben added. "Three more of them called in sick this morning." 

Kimberly just shook her head. "Weird."

"Um...?" said Lucas.

"Honey," said Eric. "Think I could have a word with you?" Kimberly's attention snapped to her husband, who was looking a mix of sheepish and annoyed. "In private?" he added.

"Certainly n...OW!" began one of the two men that Kimberly hadn't previously met before, and whose presence she'd basically ignored until he'd spoken. But before he could finish his sentence, his colleague had elbowed him sharply in the ribs, provoking the yelp of pain and it was left to Lucas to say,

"Of course."

Kimberly moved aside and watched as Lucas and the other man, between them, manhandled the first man out of the room. Wes, Jen and Mr Collins followed them.

"Boss?" said Ben. "Anything you want me to do?"

"Talk to Lucas," Eric answered. "He knows better than I do what's going to happen."

Ben nodded and withdrew.

"Want to tell me what's going on?" Kimberly asked. "Starting with who Pinky and Brain are?"

Eric offered a half laugh at that. "The loudmouth one is Lieutenant Bunton. The other one is Lieutenant Chisholm. They're both members of Time Force -- department of Temporal Investigations, in fact, although who or what they are, Lucas hasn't said -- but I get the feeling he doesn't like them all that much!"

"And they want...?" Kimberly prompted.

Eric sighed. "They're here to arrest me."

Kimberly stared at Eric for a full minute. "I'm sorry," she finally managed, "that sounded like you just said they wanted to arrest you." Eric nodded. "You're kidding." Eric shook his head. "Why the hell do they want to do that?"

Eric gave another sigh. "It's mostly to do with my 'permitting' you -- a non-sanctioned civilian -- to use first my morpher and now Jen's. It's also to do with the experiment of Zaskin's that's letting you do the latter. Since they can't arrest him..."

"But they can arrest you?!"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"You're not just going to let 'em do this, are you?" Kimberly exclaimed. 

"I don't really have a huge amount of choice, from what Lucas has said." Eric shrugged his shoulders. "He's got a plan for dealing with this -- if nothing else, he has you to testify that certainly your use of the Quantum Morpher was unavoidable..."

"Damn straight it was -- and that reminds me, why the hell are they suddenly now dragging that up anyway? That was ten years ago!"

Eric offered her a smile. "That was what I said." The smile faded. "There's something going on in Time Force. Lucas doesn't know what or why, but he's working on finding out and fixing it."

"So what's Lucas' wonder-plan?" Kimberly wanted to know.

"In the first place, for me to go with Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee."

"Into the lion's den," Kimberly observed, a sinking feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. "I don't like it."

"Me either," Eric admitted. "But for this to be straightened out, it's gotta be done in a court of law where the charges were brought. No good going to the county sheriff's office here."

Kimberly snickered faintly. "Love to see his expression if we did."

"Yeah."

"So you have to go to...what is it. 3013?" Eric nodded. "And be treated like a criminal for something you couldn't do anything about?" Eric nodded again. "Meantime Lucas is...?"

"Talking to the powers that be," Eric responded. "Probably with you. Once the judge knows the circumstances..." He spread his hands. "It's a BS charge and they know it. They'll have to release me."

Kimberly nodded, but all the while she had a horrible suspicion that it wasn't going to be anything like as simple as Eric was making out. Nothing in the last six weeks had been. Before she could voice her fears, Lucas reappeared, with Bunton and Chisholm in tow.

"Time to go, Captain Myers," snapped Bunton, reaching out for Eric. Kimberly could see Eric restraining himself from doing something to Bunton that they both would regret -- Bunton a little more readily than Eric!

"Would you at least allow me to kiss my wife goodbye?" Eric said instead.

Bunton opened his mouth to say something, but Chisholm got in first: "Certainly -- but please make it fast. The sooner you come with us, the sooner this mess can be straightened out."

Kimberly thought Lucas muttered, "First piece of sense either of you've come out with," but she wasn't sure, particularly as Eric enveloped her in a tender embrace. He pressed his lips against hers in a kiss that was urgent and needy at the same time. It told her he held the same fears she did, that this was not going to be easy. She responded in kind, imprinting the moment on her memory all the while hoping it would only be a matter of hours before she had him back.

"OK, that's enough -- time to go." Bunton's growl was unwelcome. For a second time, Kimberly was intimately aware of what Eric's first reaction was. This time, she could feel his arms tensing, ready to make the blow.

"Don't," she murmured softly. "Not worth it."

He kissed her lightly on the temple. "I know." He bent and whispered in her ear, "It won't be long. Promise."

"I'll hold you to that."

Then Bunton had grabbed hold of Eric's shoulders and was pulling them apart.

Kimberly could do nothing but watch as Bunton and Chisholm led Eric away. She felt an arm go around her shoulders, but it wasn't until its owner said, "We'll get him back, Kim," that she realised it belonged to Lucas.

"You're damn right we're going to get him back," she replied. "What's the plan?"

~*~

Alice watched as her brother most effectively gave Rick the brush off. That probably meant things had gone badly between John and Eric. _Don't they always?_ she mused with a groan. _Dinner tonight's gonna be..._ But she never finished the thought, as at that moment, the conference room door opened to admit first Ben, then Wes, Jen and -- most surprising of all -- Mr Collins, Rick and Lexia's grandfather.

"Is everyone here?" Ben asked as Wes did a quick headcount.

"Lexia's not," Jen noted. "And Gina ought to be here."

"Hm." Ben nodded.

"I'll go look for them," Wes offered. "Lucas and Kim'll be down in a minute or two, and we ought to make the most of the time."

"Good plan."

Alice noted who hadn't been named -- and who was strangely missing now. "Where's Eric?" she asked.

"It's a..." Ben grimaced. "A long story."

"What's happened to dad?" John demanded. "And what's going on?"

"We'll explain in a minute," Jen answered. "Soon as Lucas and your mom get here."

"Should we be here?" Paul asked, clearly feeling a little uncomfortable.

"Ben?" Mr Collins prompted.

"They're involved," Ben replied. "Sorry guys, but thanks to yesterday, this is something you need to hear about too."

A tense sort of silence fell over the conference room. It was briefly punctuated by Wes' return, along with Gina and Lexia, but for the moment part it remained intact until Lucas and Kimberly arrived. That was when Alice knew something was badly wrong. Her mother, as angry as Alice ever remembered seeing her, looked about ready to start throwing punches.

"Where's dad?" John repeated.

Everyone looked to Lucas and waited for the answer, and Lucas gave it, grimly. Alice felt sick as she learned what had happened barely five minutes ago. Looking around the room, she could see similar reactions in everyone else.

"We're not just gonna let this happen, are we?" John asked, voicing the question that was on Alice's mind. 

Given how rocky John and Eric's relationship was of late, that John was asking it gave Alice pause. Eric had obviously said something to John that had gone deep. Maybe he had got through to him. Maybe they had reached some sort of understanding. Maybe... 

"No," Lucas agreed, pulling Alice's attention back to the here and now. "We're definitely not going to sit back and take this. As things stand, Kimberly, Wes and I will be travelling back to 3013 when this meeting's over, where we will proceed to make hell with the legal system until the supreme court comes to its senses -- as it were." A couple of snickers met that statement and Lucas smiled faintly.

"Why Wes?" asked Taylor. "Surely Jen would be a better bet -- no offence, Wes."

"None taken," Wes replied, smiling. "You're right, she would be."

"So...?"

"I see Taylor hasn't changed, then," observed Lucas, eliciting a faint smirk from Jen. Alice wondered what he meant. "The answer is..."

"I'm pregnant," Jen explained. "Time travel and pregnancy don't mix well. There's a huge potential for a spontaneous miscarriage."

Taylor winced, her hand going to her own belly in a gesture that surprised Alice.

__

"Any other questions so far?" asked Lucas.

"What's your backup plan?" Ben replied. "I know you've got one."

Lucas nodded. "Two other people will be going back with us -- smuggled back, I should say. Things in Time Force right now are **not** good. The fact that this has all come up now, after what happened with Frax and then Mirracon is not coincidental. In fact, things have been looking rocky for some time now. Since Frax abducted you four," and at that he nodded at Alice, Rick, John and Lexia in turn, "I've been working on a task force independent of Time Force to try and track down the root cause and put it right before they cause major trouble."

"Think you've failed on that last one, Lucas," Wes observed.

"I know."

"So who is this task force and what're they looking for?" asked Rick.

"As things stand," said Lucas, "they're three people I trust implicitly -- Rob Logan, our old friend Dr Hawking," at that, Jen choked with what sounded like laughter, although Alice couldn't see anything amusing about it, "and Dr Ven Evora. They've had a certain amount of help from Jackie Bennett, who's still a member of Time Force Technical but who's ready to quit and join the task force when I say the word. Same for Trip and Nadira in my department."

Much of this was so much Greek to Alice, although she recognised several of the names.

"As for what they're looking for," Lucas continued, "it's the same thing as Time Force is ostensibly looking for: The Master. I am ninety-nine percent certain he's he one behind everything -- and that includes the problems in Time Force."

"Which is why you set the task force up separate to Time Force," concluded Ben, nodding. "Makes sense. Who're you planning on smuggling?"

"Rick's one of them," Lucas replied.

"What? Me?!" Rick looked stunned.

"Are you sure?" Jen asked.

Lucas nodded. "Positive. The only person I know who knows more about computers and communications is Trip -- and if, or until, I know that Eric's not going to be freed any other way, I need Trip to remain a member of Time Force."

"But me?" echoed Rick. "I..." But words failed him.

"Think about this, Rick," said John quietly. "Thanks to Frax, I know enough about fighting and martial arts to probably be able to give dad a run for his money in a fight."

"And I know enough about explosives to level a good size building," Lexia put in.

"I guess." Rick sounded dubious.

"Don't guess, know," Alice replied. "If Lucas says you know as much as Trip, believe it."

"Who else did you have in mind?" Jen asked.

"I'll do it," Alice volunteered before Lucas could answer.

"Honey..." began Kimberly.

"Ali?" said John, puzzled.

"Look," Alice replied, "unless Lucas has anyone else in mind," at which, Lucas shook his head, "whoever else goes needs to be someone who won't be easily missed here. That makes it one of you, me and Lexia, because who's gonna miss a cadet Guardian? Not like we're exactly on active duty or anything like that."

"But why you?" John persisted.

"You can't," Alice replied. "Or had you forgotten you'd broken your wrist? Which leaves Lexia and me -- and I owe Dad this."

"If Frax wasn't already dead, he would be if I got my hands on him," Kimberly muttered. "Lucas, may I talk to my daughter for a moment?"

"Sure -- but I want to leave as quickly as we can."

Kimberly nodded. "Alice." The expression on her face and her tone of voice told Alice that this wasn't an optional conversation.

Reluctantly, Alice stood up and followed Kimberly from the room. As she left, she heard Lucas tell everyone else what was going to happen. At least in his mind she was going. The trick would be convincing Kimberly!

~*~

Kimberly led Alice into the second conference room, trying to work out what to say. She couldn't fault Alice's reasoning -- that was one of the more irritating aspects of what Frax had done to Alice; it was now rare for her reasoning to **be** at fault. That didn't mean Kimberly liked it. Particularly now -- and particularly given her third piece of reasoning.

"Mom -- I'm going with you and you can't make me stay here," Alice stated as the door closed behind her.

"Honey -- **why** do you want to go?" Kimberly replied.

"Like I said," Alice answered, "I owe Dad to do this. How many times has he dug me out of a hole? How many times when I was a little kid did he save my life, mom? How much has he done for me and how many times have I acted like an idiot in response? I can't take back all the times I've yelled at him or screamed at him or..." she hesitated a beat then continued, "Or told him how he's not my real dad." Kimberly couldn't help but wince at that reminder of how most of the current mess had begun six weeks ago. "I can't put that stuff right. But I can do this and help him now."

Kimberly looked at Alice and found herself looking at a mature, self-assured young woman who had -- at least in her mind -- reasoned her way to a sensible conclusion. _And I'm still reacting to her as if she was sixteen..._ Kimberly slowly shook her head. "And the fact that Rick's going...?"

Alice coloured slightly. "I'd have volunteered anyway...but Rick and I work well together."

It was almost an honest answer -- probably as honest as Alice had admitted to herself, never mind anyone else, Kimberly realised. She sighed, knowing that Lucas had already accepted Alice's presence on this trip. "I can't talk you out of this?" Alice just shook her head. "For the record, I don't like this. At all. And you can bet your allowance that your father will have words to say to you about this when we're done."

"Just so long as he's there to have words with me," Alice retorted, "I won't mind."

At that, Kimberly was forced to laugh. "Ali, you're incorrigible."

Alice grinned. "I just take after you, mom."

~*~

It took amazingly little time to organise, Rick decided. Within an hour, he found himself, along with Alice, his parents and Kimberly standing on a beach just to the north of Silverhills before a strange, yellow, pear-shaped vehicle. From the vast seas of data that had been implanted in his mind the term time ship drifted free -- although it looked nothing like a ship, that much Rick was positive about!

"Kids," said Lucas, "I need you to do a couple of things before we go. I know you're both wearing your morphers. I need you to give them to me -- and anything else you're wearing, like jewellery or watches. You'll get it back when you get to the task force's base, but as you're being smuggled as a biological sample, we can't have any anything showing up on the scanners other than biological matter."

"What about the SG uniform?" asked Kimberly. "Because I can assure you it's synthetic."

"Thus spake the laundry Goddess of the Myers family," murmured Wes with a grin.

"She's right," Jen replied, swatting at Wes. "Take it from me, if not from Kim."

Lucas snickered. "That's the second thing. I have something for you guys to change into," he added, speaking again to Rick and Alice. "But before you get changed, I need those personal items. Anything you don't want, give to Jen to look after."

"I'll be taking the uniforms home with me, too," she added.

Mutely, Rick handed over his morpher to Lucas, while Alice handed over the morpher and a narrow gold chain on which hung a tiny ring.

"What's that?" Rick asked.

"Good luck charm," Alice replied. "When dad proposed to mom, he proposed to me too. Can't think of a better symbol of good luck."

"And we're probably going to need it, too."

"Anything else?" Lucas asked. They both shook their heads. "OK. Afraid all I have for you to change into are hospital gowns. **Not** the type that open at the back, you'll be pleased to hear!"

Feeling faintly uncomfortable, Rick shrugged out of his Guardian uniform and pulled on the proffered gown. About the only comfort to the situation was that neither Lexia nor John were there to know about this -- and he had no intention of telling them about it either. To judge by Alice's expression, she wasn't planning to, either.

He handed his uniform over to his mother. Alice followed suit.

"OK?" asked Lucas. Rick nodded. "If you guys can do your goodbyes..."

Lucas stepped back to permit Kimberly, Wes and Jen to step forward. Rick was vaguely aware of Kimberly wrapping Alice up in a hug, then that awareness vanished as his mother did the same to him.

"Take care of yourself," Jen murmured. "Be careful."

"I will, mom."

"I'll see you soon," Wes said as Jen stepped back. He pulled Rick into a hug. "Take care of Alice," he whispered. "Don't let her do anything silly."

"Dad!" Rick objected, even as Wes stepped back. Wes just offered a grin.

"Ready?" Lucas asked.

Rick and Alice exchanged a glance. "Yep."

"All right. This might be a little weird -- and I'm sorry about that. I'm going to need you to stand as close together as you can."

"Easiest way to do this," Alice mused, "is going to be if we hug." Suiting action to words, she wrapped her arms around him.

Initially awkward, Rick matched her. The awkwardness faded, though, in the face of how comfortable the pose seemed. _Maybe, when this is over..._

~*~

Jen chewed her lip nervously as she watched Rick and Alice embrace. There was a flash of light and the two smugglees were placed into the cyro-suspension necessary to sneak them into the thirty-first century. The risks of this were huge. The kids had been well warned about it, but still Jen couldn't help but feel nervous. 

Lucas completed containment -- a harsh term for something as voluntary as this was -- and straightened, cradling the canister gently. "Looks like we're all set," he said. "Sooner we get going, the sooner this is all going to be resolved."

"And the sooner I have my husband back," Kimberly finished.

Suiting action to words, Lucas led Kimberly into the time ship, leaving Jen and Wes a chance to say goodbye in private.

Wes leaned down, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. "Take care of yourself," he murmured.

"And you," Jen replied, kissing him back. "Give my love to Trip and Nadira."

Wes smiled as he stepped back. "I will do -- but they'll be able to do it themselves; we'll be in regular comm. touch."

Jen nodded and he started to head into the time ship. "Good luck," she called.

He paused in the entry hatch and looked back at her, a wry expression on his face. "I have a nasty feeling we're gonna need all that and much, much more."

Jen nodded. A moment or two later, the hatch slid into place and a moment or two later, as the turbines of the time ship kicked up a miniature sandstorm, the pear-shaped vessel lifted off from the beach and vanished into a purple/black time hole. A moment later still and the only sign that there had been anyone else on the beach barring Jen herself was the flattened patch of sand where the time ship had been sitting.

She sighed. Nothing more to be done here. Time to go back to SGHQ and help Ben run the Guardians and cover for everyone's absences. _And hope like hell this is sorted out quickly._

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	4. Interrogate

_This episode carries a content warning: While still PG-13, much of the episode deals with mature themes including rape and torture; if you are of a sensitive disposition and/or these themes make you nervous, this is the point to bail. Reading on is at your own risk._

~*~

Interrogate

Eric felt groggy. He had an outsize headache, which was making it excruciatingly difficult to think about anything else. That in itself wasn't enough to make him suspicious, but the low-grade pain buzz from the rest of his body was. It was a familiar feeling. An uncomfortably familiar sensation, but the recollection of it remained just beyond his reach.

Something had happened.

Something bad.

There had been a fight, he thought. Beyond the blinding pain in his head, there was the impression of a scuffle, but pain in neither head nor rest of body matched the after effects of a fight, exactly.

Not any old fight at any rate.

But there was a memory, far older than the scuffle, that was lurking, just out of sight.

A little of the blinding pain dissipated, allowing him to take a little more notice of his surroundings. Over the complaints of anguished nerves, he realised he was lying flat on his back, on some sort of hard pallet. Somehow, that surprised him. Shouldn't he have been...

...kneeling? Or hanging? Arms chained above his head? Blood in his mouth for having bitten his tongue?

Eric froze. He knew the way this felt. Had felt it on two occasions, both at the hands of a man mercifully dead for more than ten years.

The reminder that Zafar bel Abis was dead -- and Eric knew he was because he had been the one to kill the sadistic bastard -- was enough to prevent any sense of true panic. But if it hadn't been bel Abis -- or one of his minions -- who would have been wielding a taser?

~*~

Somehow, Lexia wasn't entirely surprised to find herself back in the canteen. The moment Gina had asked Ben if she could 'borrow' both Lexia and John for the administration department -- at least for the day -- she knew that while John might be taking care of administrative tasks, that wasn't what Gina had in mind for her. _And here we are,_ Lexia mused, nursing the cup of hot chocolate Gina had bought her.

"So," said Gina, easing down into the seat opposite. "I'm not gonna ask if you want to talk about 'it' because I figure you don't." Lexia said nothing. "But I also figure that whatever 'it' is, you **do** need to talk."

Lexia said nothing and studied the tabletop that separated her from Gina. It didn't seem like enough somehow.

"I'll let you in on something," Gina continued matter of factly. "Bottling 'it' up like this -- keeping whatever 'it' is to yourself -- is gonna make things hurt all the more when 'it' finally does come out."

"How do you know?" Lexia retorted angrily. "You don't know anything about it."

"Don't I?"

Gina's tone of voice was odd. Part rueful, part wry, part wistful, it was odd enough that despite herself, Lexia found herself looking up, curious. The expression on Gina's face was more rueful than anything.

"I've been where you are," Gina continued gently. "Something happened to me. Something that I thought had changed me and that would change how everyone else viewed me."

~*~

"Get up!"

The voice was loud and harsh and it set Eric's head throbbing once more. Before he could do more than groan, hands seized him by the shoulders and hauled. Searing agony lanced through his body at the sudden movement and for a full minute, the world greyed almost to the point of unconsciousness.

"Move."

Even as his vision was finally clearing, Eric found himself been propelled forwards without being really offered a chance to gain his balance. He stumbled and incurred another blast of pain. What the hell was going on? Where the hell was he?

A squint in the direction of his captor told him nothing. All he could learn was that the other man was taller than he was and was wearing some kind of grey coverall. And then he found himself stumbling again, which turned his attention away from where he was and what was going on and refocused it on just simply staying on his feet.

They reached a blank door -- at least, it looked like a door, although there was no sign of any open or close mechanism as far as Eric could see. The coverall-wearing man produced something akin to a garage door opener and pointed it at the door. The door swiftly slid aside. Even before it had stopped moving, Eric found himself being pushed through the aperture.

He fell. He knew it was going to hurt when he hit the ground. He tried frantically to regain his balance but to no avail. He went sprawling into the room beyond the door, and then the pain hit.

~*~

Gina watched as surprise and suspicion fought for dominance over Lexia's expression.

"What happened?" Lexia finally asked.

"I grew up in New Jersey, just over the state line from New York. When I was sixteen I took a job in my local Seven-Eleven. Just a weekend thing." Lexia nodded. "One of my colleagues was a boy -- high school senior -- I knew and who I thought was..." Gina paused to select the right word.

"You thought he was a hottie?" Lexia suggested, a small smile on her face.

Gina smiled back. "Yeah. He was definitely that. The football quarterback. Really built." At that, Lexia snickered a little. "We got rostered together most of the time, and, when we got off shift, he used to walk me home. He was sweet."

"Sounds it."

"One night -- Saturday evening, really -- he was walking me home. We were talking -- he was telling me about the upcoming game against Sayreville High. Almost out of nowhere, he said _'So -- you got a date for the dance next week?'_ I said I hadn't. He smiled. _'Wanna go with me?'_ he asked. I wasn't going to say no -- I mean, it's not every night of the week the starting quarterback asks you to go with him to a high school dance!"

Lexia nodded. "Sounds perfect."

Gina gave a faint smile. "It does. Too bad midnight came and the magic wore off." 

~*~

The pain seemed to take forever to abate. 

Maybe he blacked out a couple of times. That would explain it. 

Or maybe it really had taken forever to subside. 

No. Couldn't be that. No stubble. No real time passing. 

Must just be fading in and out of consciousness.

"Listen up," ordered a voice. 

Fractured focus knitted together again and Eric's first coherent thought was to tell the speaker to go to hell, but he now found himself suddenly unable to do anything but listen. 

"You're currently under the influence of a drug called tmazacol. It's a little primitive, but somehow fitting." Instant nausea finally overcame the last remnants of the pain. Eric knew what tmazacol was. "I talk. You listen. I ask you questions, you answer. You refuse? Well you've already felt the pain that brings about."

There was a pause. Eric wanted to ask what was going on but the tmazacol kept his jaw clamped shut. It was a drug he was eternally thankful had only been a nasty rumour when he'd been in Kosovo -- Zafar bel Abis would have had a lot of fun with it. It worked as a mix of truth serum and will-inhibitor. In the face of anything his mind perceived as a direct order, he could do nothing but obey. Questions or suggestions provided him with a choice. Either answer or obey (and be forced to tell the truth or be utterly compliant), or resist and have every last shred of nerve and fibre explode into agonising pain.

It was no choice.

"What is your name and rank?"

"Myers, Eric. Captain. 569-34-9032."

"What is your occupation?"

"Myers, Eric. Captain. 569-34-9032." And then the pain began again.

~*~

Lexia looked puzzled. "What happened?"

Gina sighed. "We went to the dance. At least half the girls spent the whole evening glaring at me. I mean, here I was, just a sophomore, at a school dance...not only with a senior but the starting quarterback on the school's football team. If looks could have killed, I'd have been dead several times over. And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, he kissed me. _'How about we get some fresh air?'_ he suggested. He could have told me to jump off a cliff at that moment and I'd have done it," Gina admitted. "First time anyone had ever kissed me like that. He led me into the school grounds, and at first, it was nice. Walking with a cute guy who's paying attention to you..."

"It sounds romantic."

"It was. To start off." Gina sighed. The reflex to look down was strong, but doing that would wreck this. Lexia needed to see her; needed to know, so she forced herself to keep meeting the younger woman's gaze. "He kissed me again and this time, as nice as it was, I was more aware of what his hands were doing. _'C'mon,'_ he said when the kiss ended, _'lemme show you something.'_ I said _'I don't know...I'd kinda like to go back inside. It's kinda cold out here.'_ He just offered me a rakehell smile. _'I know a way you can warm up.'_ He kissed me again, hard. And he groped me. Harder. So hard, I had bruises across my chest the following morning. I said, _'No -- I don't...'_ And then I found myself under the bleachers on the football field, and he was kissing me again and groping me.

"The next few minutes were a blur," Gina continued quietly. "He raped me, all the while telling me _'You know you want this'_, and it hurt. God, it hurt. And when he'd finished, he kissed me again, and then he left me there. In the dirt and the garbage and in tears."

Lexia stared now, looking aghast and -- Gina noted -- just fractionally relieved. As if she realised she wasn't alone. That latter made Gina's heart sink; she'd been she'd been wrong. "What happened?" Lexia asked softly.

"I managed to get myself together enough to go home, but by the time I was home..." Gina stopped and shook her head. Lexia didn't need to hear the gory details. "I didn't want to tell anyone, because I figured that it was because of something I'd done, and that if people knew they wouldn't want anything to do with me." Gina wondered if Lexia realised she was nodding her head. Probably not. "But I then saw him, with another girl. Saw him with his arm around her...they were walking down the hallway at the high school."

"What did you do?"

"My first reaction was to get scared, then hurt, then I got very, very angry. I thought about what he'd done to me, I thought about her -- another starry-eyed girl, she was even younger than me, just a freshman -- and I knew I had to do something to stop him from ever hurting another girl again."

"Who did you tell?" Lexia asked.

"In the first place, my mom. That was the hardest thing of the whole mess -- I can't lie and tell you it was anything else. But when I'd finished, I felt a tiny bit better; a tiny bit less..."

"Wrong?" Lexia put in softly.

Gina nodded. "Yes."

"And did you manage it?" Lexia asked. "Did you stop him from hurting anyone else?"

Gina offered a smile. "Yeah. It wasn't easy -- but yeah, I did. Once I stepped forward, other people stepped forward, other things came to light..." Gina's smile strengthened. "It can be done. You can get through it." She leaned forwards, taking one of Lexia's cold paws in her hands. "Think you can manage that first step?"

There was a long moment, then Lexia finally said, "I think...I can try."

~*~

The questions abated, allowing the pain to recede, leaving Eric huddled in a ball on the floor of the room.

"Myers, why don't you make it easy on yourself here?" asked the voice presently.

"Go...to...hell..." Eric gritted as a response, precipitating another blast of searing pain.

"I can make the pain go away. Just tell me what I want to know."

Obstinately, Eric kept his mouth closed. This time the pain swelled until he was left shaking.

"Think of your family," the voice urged. "What would they think if you die here, over this?"

"They'd...know...why..." But he couldn't even finish the sentence before a fresh wave of pain hit.

"Tell me what I want to know!" the voice demanded.

Against his will, Eric found his mouth moving, the words coming, "I can't."

~*~

Lexia swallowed nervously and absently rubbed sweaty palms against her thighs as she waited outside her mother's office. It had seemed easy enough when she'd been sitting in the canteen, listening to Gina's story, but now standing here, waiting for Jen to return from the beach...

"Hey -- Lexia!"

At JJ's voice, Lexia tensed. She'd been avoiding him all day so far and her first impulse was to run, but even as she recognised that she also realised that at some point, she was going to have to face him.

"Lexia?"

Slowly, she turned to face him. He looked concerned. About her? "Hey."

"Are you OK?" he asked.

He really **was** concerned about her. "Yeah." The lie was automatic. She sighed and shook her head. "No." At that, JJ's eyebrows lifted and he looked even more concerned. "It's..."

"It's OK." JJ sighed. "Sorry -- I..."

"Wait!" Lexia surprised herself with that. JJ too, to judge by his expression now. "Look...I..." She hesitated. "It's complicated...and it's not your fault," she added hastily, as he opened his mouth. "I just...need some time." His shoulders slumped a little. "I...maybe...I need to talk to my mom...need to...to get my head straight...but -- maybe we could go for a drink. Maybe? Soon?"

JJ offered her a smile at that. "Of course. Whenever you're ready."

~*~

John balanced the small stack of folders on the plaster cast as he started to climb the stairs. This probably **wasn't** what Jackson had in mind when he said 'rest', but at least this meant he was being 'useful'. 

He sighed. Eric's words were weighing heavily on him. _"I am disappointed, but I am also very, very angry. What you did was extremely stupid and it could have got you killed."_

John had squirmed at the assessment, unable to deny it, and he had squirmed even more when he'd finally understood what Eric's intent was behind the courses. _What he probably tried to tell me over the weekend and I was too bone-headed to listen about,_ he reflected. _I wanted to show off. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to live up to his reputation. I screwed up._

He heaved a sigh as he reached the top of the stairs and turned to head towards the admin office and the filing room that was to be the home of the folders he was carrying. But as he reached the door, the sound of voices carried from around the corner. Peering around the corner, his eyes fell on Lexia and JJ.

John frowned, wondering what Lexia was doing up here -- and how it was she'd escaped from the filing tasks Gina had borrowed them for. As curious as he was, though, from the body language of both JJ and Lexia, it was obviously a private conversation, and he was about to head into the admin office when Lexia stood up on tiptoe and lightly kissed JJ on the cheek.

"Thanks for understanding," she said.

John felt sick.

Everything he'd done the previous day had been for Lexia. And yet here she was. With JJ. And definitely **with** JJ, judging by the way JJ leant down and returned the kiss.

He'd pissed his father off, got his wrist broken...now he'd lost the girl too.

~*~

The throbbing headache was back, and this time Eric could feel where it was they'd hit him to knock him out. It was throbbing as a counterpoint to the actual headache. Slowly, he put his fingers to the spot. They came away wet. It was bleeding. Not even the KLA had hit him that hard. Or had they used something with an edge?

He lay back on the pallet and closed his eyes. The headache was subsiding much faster this time, which was something of a relief, and as it subsided, it brought back memories. Not of his time as a captive of Zafar bel Abis, but of where he was, or more importantly, when. He remembered now, and somehow it was more alarming to know than not.

Time Force were supposed to be the good guys.

Weren't they?

~*~

Jen passed John on the stairs and noted the shell-shocked expression on his face. She frowned. She knew he'd been upset by what had happened to Eric, but John -- very like his father -- tended to choose the 'get mad' option before he did anything else, so either he'd tried something and it hadn't worked, or this was nothing to do with what had happened to Eric. _And given everything, I hope it's the latter. I can deal with that. If it's the former... _Jen shook her head. 

She reached the top of the stairs, and passed JJ, also on his way down the stairs. Stranger and stranger... Then she rounded the corner to head into her office and found Lexia waiting outside it, and Jen found two and two coming together in her mind. _JJ is sweet on her, John is sweet on her..._ Jen sighed. _Oh boy._

"Mom?" Lexia's voice drew Jen's thoughts back to the present. "Can I talk to you?"

Jen nodded. "Of course." She opened her office door and entered, Lexia following. "What's wrong?" she asked, half expecting this to relate to either John or JJ -- or both, possibly.

"It's...um..." Lexia looked nervous. "It's about Mirracon...and what happened yesterday."

Jen sat down, heavily, in her seat. That was the last thing she'd been expecting, and to judge from Lexia's expression now, that was going to be the least of the revelations.

~*~

It was in the time ship, on the way to this place, that he'd been stuck with the tmazacol, Eric thought. Chisholm had been the one to do it -- Eric remembered now. It was after the scuffle. He hadn't been involved in that -- he'd been in prisoner containment, only able to watch what was going on around him, not take part. Chisholm had said,

__

"There's a change of plans. We're not going to headquarters."

__

"What do you mean?" Bunton had responded, puzzled.

Chisholm had smiled. _"What I say."_ Then he had produced something that looked akin to a taser_. "And if you don't shut up, you'll be joining him."_

__

"That's an illegal weapon!" Bunton had objected. _"You're not supposed...I'm calling command."_

"Oh no you're not."

They had scuffled, briefly. Chisholm had been the victor -- unsurprisingly, considering he was armed and Bunton wasn't. Chisholm put Bunton into restraints, then he had turned his attention towards Eric.

__

"As you can see," Chisholm had explained, _"The Master pays well. Oh, don't worry, you will be going to trial, but there's somewhere you have to go first..."_ And so saying, he had turned the taser on Eric. And that had been the last thing he remembered until he had come round in this cell -- wherever it was.

__

Hope Lucas has a plan 'b'', Eric found himself thinking,_ because I don't reckon plan 'a' is gonna work..._

~*~

Kimberly groaned as she felt the time ship touch down. She hadn't felt as sick as this since before John was born.

"Quantum sickness," Lucas diagnosed. "It gets to most people."

"And we have to do that again to get back," Kimberly murmured, her stomach souring at the prospect.

"We can give you something for it on the return journey," Lucas promised. "C'mon. Sooner you start moving again the sooner it wears off."

"I'll take your word for that," Kimberly murmured, allowing Wes to help her from her seat. "And how come neither of you are sick?"

"I've done too much time travel for it to affect me any more," Wes explained as they started for the exit. "Believe me, first time I felt as sick as a dog."

As she reached the outside of the time ship, Kimberly realised that there was something of a welcoming committee waiting for them. Nadira was unmistakeable, but who the man waiting with her was, she didn't like to hazard a guess.

Nadira offered a smile. "Welcome back, sir." She then added, "And welcome, Kim, Wes. I'd say it was good to see you both..."

"But not under these circumstances," Wes finished. "It is good to see you, though -- and Jen sends her love."

"Anything to report while I was gone?" Lucas asked.

Nadira shook her head. "Been all quiet here. Oh, apart from one thing that came in just as I was heading down here -- Trip has the details. I think it's another Kerin Curve Ball."

Lucas just groaned.

"Um, excuse me," said the other member of the welcoming committee, who had so far been respectfully silent. "Dr Bennett sent me for the samples you collected, sir."

A knot formed in Kimberly's stomach at his words and she glanced at Lucas again. Was this the right person? Would the kids be all right?

"Ah -- Officer Drake." Lucas was smiling. Kimberly tried to relax, the name was the one Lucas had mentioned during the trip, but even knowing that she found herself nervous. "Yes, the samples are ready -- and you can tell Dr Bennett that I'll be down to see her in due course." 

Officer Drake smiled widely at that. "Yes sir." He saluted smartly and headed into the time ship to collect the samples.

"C'mon," said Lucas, heading for the exit. "The quicker we get to my office, the quicker we can get things moving." Then in a lower tone he added, "And the sooner I can verify that the kids are OK."

~*~

The light came on in the cell, startling Eric from the doze he'd fallen into. He had a moment to process that, then the cell door opened and in stepped Chisholm and another man. The second man was wearing a white lab-coat over his clothing, which suggested to Eric he was probably a doctor of some sort.

"No, no -- don't get up, Captain Myers," Chisholm said. "In fact, you just lie there."

Eric inwardly cursed. There was clearly still some tmazacol running through his bloodstream, to judge by the way every impulse to move suddenly evaporated. How long did the damn stuff stay active, anyway? What was it Peterson had said about it?

"This," Chisholm continued, "is Dr Pearze." The doctor smiled pleasantly and nodded. "I can't risk you running off at the mouth, so the good doctor here is going to make you a little more...obedient." Chisholm smiled. Unlike Pearze, it was not a pleasant sight. "Tmazacol is all well and good for aiding interrogations, but..." Chisholm snickered and stepped back. "There are much better things available to us now."

Pearze stepped forwards, pulling a hypo-spray from his lab-coat pocket. "Don't worry, Captain Myers, you won't feel a thing." So saying, he pressed the injector against Eric's neck and discharged the contents into his blood stream.

There was a faint sting, which Eric barely had a chance to recognise, then everything went dim.

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	5. Prosecute

Prosecute

Jackie Bennett, the former director of Time Force Technical, prominent scientist and erstwhile associate of Lucas Kendall, peered through the microscope at the sample. She looked the very study of concentration, but her mind was on something far removed from what she was looking at. She was nervous. 

She didn't like this plan one little bit. There was too much scope for it to go drastically wrong, and at the same time, she knew that Lucas' planning was the only way this could be done. They **did** need all the help they could get, and with prying eyes everywhere, that help did need to be smuggled in.

"Dr Bennett?"

Namir's voice pulled Jackie's attention back to the real world. He was back. That was stage one complete, if the containment transport he was pushing was anything to go by.

"Ah -- are those Major Kendall's samples?" she asked.

"Yes." Namir smiled a little. "Where do you want me to put them?"

"In my office -- I'd better come with you to...catalogue them." Jackie slipped off her stool and stood up. "This way."

She led Namir through the lab to the pokey little office that she'd been given on her demotion. They, whoever they were, had placed assorted listening devices, but thanks to some judicious experiments in comm. technology and EM bursts, the devices had been fried several times over. Jackie shook her head at that. _Never try to bug the office of a woman who knows more electronics than you do._

She now ushered Namir in, then closed the door.

"We have ten minutes and no more before I'm missed in the lab," she said quietly.

Namir grimaced, even as he was undoing the catches on the transport to reveal a dozen foot-high, cylindrical cryo-stasis pods. "That's not enough time."

"It's the best I can do, Nam -- and Lucas knew that when he built this plan. So did you," she reminded him, lifting out the first pod. "You're just going to have to work fast -- and hope they're quick on the uptake." She looked into the pod and noted something on a convenient datapad. "You know which pod?"

Namir nodded, selecting one of the others. "This one. Lucas labelled it Bio-Sample-Beta-III. It's the 'least' important of all the pods."

"Bright boy," Jackie replied, shooting a brief smile in his direction as she pulled the next pod out. "Get moving. Eight minutes."

She worked quickly, cataloguing the samples Lucas had legitimately collected for her, while Namir swiftly set in motion the restore function. This was going to be touch and go. Cryo-stasis took barely seconds to employ but several minutes to be reversed. There were plenty of good, decent, physical and biological reasons for it, but at that moment, Jackie cursed them all. She'd reached pod Beta-I, the last but one of the authentic samples before the reversal had even got half way through.

__

This isn't going to work... Jackie swallowed back the burst of nerves and catalogued the contents of Beta-I. She finished, and was just lifting out Beta-II, the pod that actually contained Beta-III's real sample, along with its own contents, when the flash of light that indicated a completed reversal came. She looked up to see Rick, who she'd been expecting, and a leggy blonde (Alice? Had to be), both standing and blinking slightly owlishly.

"Where are we?" Rick asked, looking around.

"Welcome to 3013," Namir answered, putting the now empty stasis pod on the side along with the ones Jackie had already catalogued. "I'm Namir Drake -- this is Jackie Bennett."

"Rick Collins."

"Alice Myers."

"Nam -- no time for this," she urged, her fingers automatically working to transfer one of the dual samples from Beta-II to Beta-III, thereby completing the ruse (she hoped).

"I know," Namir replied, making a swift dive for where he'd hidden the spare time force uniforms that would make up the bulk of their disguise.

"What's going on?" Alice wanted to know. "Where are we?"

"Short form," said Jackie, as she completed her own tasks, "you're currently in Time Force Headquarters in Central City."

"Please, put these on," Namir cut in, holding out the uniforms. "And hurry -- how long do we have?" he added, lifting an eyebrow in Jackie's direction.

"Less than three minutes," she replied. "Namir here," she continued, even as Alice and Rick made haste to pull on the unfamiliar clothing, "is going to get you guys out of here."

"What about our things?" Alice asked as she zipped up the uniform jacket.

"Things?" Jackie echoed. "What things?"

"It's OK -- they're taken care of," Namir interrupted. "Lucas has made another arrangement about that. Don't worry -- they'll be waiting for you when we get where we're going."

"And don't ask," Jackie added. "Better I don't know." Rick and Alice exchanged looks, but said nothing. "Ready?"

She watched while Namir ran his gaze over both visitors. "Ms Myers -- you need to tie your hair back," so saying, he tossed her a hair band. She caught it and started pulling her hair back in a severe ponytail. "Other that...you'll do. Just...follow my lead and we'll soon be out of here."

"Time's up," Jackie murmured. "Good luck!"

"Good luck yourself," Namir responded. "See you soon." He turned to Alice and Rick. "This way."

Mentally crossing her fingers, Jackie could only watch as Namir led Rick and Alice out of her office. This was the most hazardous part. There had been no-one in the lab when she and Namir had entered the office, so even if there was someone else in there now, it did mean there was no-one to raise an eyebrow that four people left a room that only two had entered, but from here until Namir had got them both into whatever transport he'd arranged, it would be touch and go. As long as Alice and Rick said nothing, it would be fine. The trouble could -- would -- come if they were asked anything. There had been no time to brief them and their lack of knowledge of this century would make them stick out like a pair of sore thumbs.

Jackie allowed herself a shake of her head then headed back out into the lab and back to her microscope. There was nothing more she could do. Lucas would be down to see her shortly. Hopefully he would say that she could leave. She wasn't cut out for this double-agent business.

She heard the lab door open, even as she tried to concentrate on the sample on her microscope. Footsteps walked up to her bench, even as she noted the cellular structure of the sample. A cough to clear a throat. Jackie didn't dare look up. _Just concentrate on the sample._

"Dr Bennett."

__

They don't know anything.

"We've been lenient with you."

__

They can't know anything.

"But you haven't played by our rules."

__

Nam will be OK.

"And now it's time to pay."

Jackie finally looked up and shot the thin man standing before her a venomous glare. "I am in the middle of an important experiment, Hordak, what are you blathering about?"

Hordak smiled, displaying his teeth in a skeletal grin. "You know very well what I'm talking about, my dear. You and your little friend, Namir Drake -- oh, we know all about him," he added as she opened her mouth to deny any knowledge. "Who do you think permitted him to falsify a persona?" He pulled out a blaster. "But you're not going to be able to tell anyone that."

~*~

"Damn."

Namir's soft exclamation made Alice freeze in her tracks. Beside her, Rick did likewise and asked, "What's wrong?"

Namir inclined his head in the direction they'd been travelling. Alice followed the gesture and saw a knot of people gathered by the exit they'd been making for. "They're checking ID cards as people leave the building."

"We don't have one," Rick realised.

"It means they're looking for someone," Namir said, grimacing. "It could be nothing."

"Or it could be us," Alice surmised. Namir nodded. She frowned for a moment. "Since I don't believe in coincidence..."

"Me either," said Rick. 

"Me three," Namir put in.

Alice flashed a quick smile. "Then, can you get us access to a computer terminal?"

Namir turned a startled gaze on her. "Probably, but what have you got in mind?"

"Rick -- think you could engineer a diversion?" Alice asked.

Rick nodded. "Probably. Might take me a minute or two, though."

"Make it a short minute or two," Alice replied. "Namir -- lead the way."

~*~

Kimberly followed Nadira, Wes and Lucas through the sterile white corridors of Time Force Headquarters. Everything looked harsh and antiseptic and very unfriendly.

"It doesn't all look like this," Wes commented. "This is just the technical department -- they do a lot of clean room stuff." He grinned a little. "The rest looks like a cross between SGHQ and the Death Star control room."

Kimberly answered with a watery smile and tried to ignore the stab of anxiety the familiar phrase brought about. "Sounds like Eric's description, not yours."

Wes winced. "Jen's -- sorry, Kim I..."

She shook her head. "Don't apologise. This is just temporary. We're going to get him back. Right?" This last was aimed at Lucas, whose shoulders twitched almost as if he were shrugging. "Right, Lucas?"

Lucas looked over his shoulder. "I'm not disagreeing with you, Kim. But I'll agree with you more when I know what it is Trip's got for us." He shot Nadira a glance. "Any ideas what that is?"

She shook her head. "Sorry, sir -- it was coming in literally as I was leaving the office."

Kimberly opened her mouth to say something, but it was swallowed by the loud, high-pitched squeal of a siren of some sort.

"What the hell is that?" Wes yelled, over the deafening noise.

"Fire alarm," Lucas responded shortly. "This way."

Within moments, Kimberly found herself out of the building and standing on a crowded, grassy quadrangle without having any real, clear idea of how she'd got there.

"Must be legit," muttered one white-uniformed officer. "The alarm's still going."

"Could be another malfunction," groused another.

"Maybe someone's gotten fed up with the ID checks," suggested a third.

"ID checks?" Nadira muttered sotto voce. "What've they been looking for?"

"Not a what," Lucas retorted tersely. "A who."

Kimberly felt faint. "I'm not liking..."

And then an explosion ripped across a section of the headquarters building.

~*~

Jen sat back in her seat feeling stunned and nauseous. She had known something was wrong -- had known something had happened to Lexia the previous day. But this? This was every parent's nightmare. And it was happening to her. To her little girl. Her baby.

"Mom?" Lexia's tone, so ashamed and hurt and scared, cut through the momentary paralysis.

Her own feelings could take a backseat for now. Right now, what mattered was Lexia. Before Lexia could say anything else, Jen was around the desk and had wrapped her arms around her. "It's OK," she murmured softly.

"Mom..." 

The tears started to fall. Lexia's. Hers. It wasn't OK. It was anything but. "It's OK, honey -- we'll be OK." The words were all she had. "It's going to be OK." _And why is Wes never here when I need him to be?_

~*~

Rick towelled his hair dry as he headed out of the bedroom of the safe house having taken a welcome shower and changed into what Namir referred to as 'standard civvies'.

Leaving Time Force Headquarters had been easy enough once he'd convinced the computer coordinated fire detection system that there was a raging inferno taking place on all floors. But even as they were leaving the building, an explosion had torn through the section they'd just left.

Namir had paled. _"That sounded like Jackie's lab." _Alice had put her hand on Namir's shoulder and given a gentle squeeze. _"C'mon."_ His voice shook a little. _"If they know about Jackie, we don't have much time."_

Namir had then led them to a waiting transport -- something that looked like a cross between a minivan and a land speeder from Star Wars. At his direction, Rick and Alice had climbed into the back while Namir had taken the driver's seat and had piloted it to the edge of Central City. There they'd walked for a block and picked up a different transport, which Namir had piloted...somewhere -- Rick wasn't sure where they were now.

Namir's only answer on being asked had been, _"Safe house. Less you know, the less you can tell."_ And much as Rick wanted to argue with the level of paranoia that implied, everything else that had gone on since he'd got up that morning begged difference.

__

Just because we're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get us. He shivered.

"Done?" Alice asked, pulling Rick's attention outwards.

He tossed the towel down on the back of the couch and sat down. "Yeah." He glanced around the room. 

"Doesn't look much like we're in the future, does it?" she commented.

Rick repeated the visual tour. The room **was** surprisingly reminiscent of home, he realised. The couch he was sitting on and the two easy chairs -- one of which Alice had curled up on -- were wholly recognisable, as was the low, wood-and-glass coffee table, although he was willing to bet that the panels weren't glass at all. Shelving across an alcove also looked familiar, although the contents -- which resembled nothing so much as old-fashioned slides, but which the information in the back of his head identified as data cards for some sort of reader -- weren't quite so. Then, set into the wall, directly opposite the couch, was the sole concession to the future; something that looked rather akin to the view screens shown in classic episodes of Star Trek. Rick knew, from the free-floating information, that it wasn't, that it was in fact a holonet screen -- but there the information stopped and he wasn't entirely sure what it was for.

"No," he agreed. "Especially when you can identify even the bits that do look weird."

Alice smiled faintly. "Yeah."

"So what happens now?"

"Now," said Namir, entering the room, followed by a man who, to Rick's eyes, looked about the same age as his parents, "we head for base."

"And I have some things for you," added the man. "Just in case we run into any more trouble, I think I'd feel happier if the two of you were armed." Before Rick could question that statement, the man produced both morphers and tossed them over. "I've also got this," he added, and produced Alice's chain. "Although wearing it will be a giveaway that you're not from this time period."

Alice accepted it from him and fastened it back around her neck. "It was given to me by my dad," she replied. "I can't not wear it."

The man looked not unsympathetic, but still concerned. "Just make sure it's well tucked under your clothing. No-one wears that kind of jewellery in this time."

Alice nodded.

"Quick introduction," said Namir. "This is Rob Logan -- Rob, this is Alice Myers and Rick Collins." Nods and terse smiles were exchanged. "If you've finished," Namir continued, a faint smile on his face, although Rick could see shadows lurking in his expression, "we need to get moving."

"Where're we going now?" Rick asked as he fastened his morpher strap.

"You'll see when we get there," Namir promised. "Rob?"

Rob nodded. "Let's get going -- sooner we go, the sooner we're there and the sooner we can get down to work."

Rick glanced at Alice. _Here we go again?_

~*~

It was chaos outside the headquarters building -- and that, Wes ruefully acknowledged, was an understatement.

"What the hell was that?" Wes exclaimed.

"Tech labs going up," Lucas replied briefly. "Wait here."

Before Wes could say anything, Lucas had disappeared into the seething mass of milling officers. He shrugged and shook his head. For a professional body, the Time Force officers really didn't seem that well trained. _Of course, how well would the Guardians do if their HQ had been blown up?_ Wes wondered, frowning. _On second thoughts, I know the answer to that -- they wouldn't want to let Eric down._ He grimaced. _This really had better be quickly fixed -- there are too many people who'll miss Eric._

"At-ten-shun!" It took Wes a few moments to recognise Lucas' voice. He knew, at least logically, that Lucas' job involved him being able to take charge and command, but it was something else to hear such a note of command in his friend's voice. Even more surprising was to see every other Time Force officer snap to attention at his command.

Lucas started directing people into the right places and Wes slowly tuned it out. Nadira looked concerned, which was understandable. There had, as yet, been no sign of Trip. Kimberly looked frustrated and worried, which was also understandable -- this was an unwanted delay to sorting things out and getting Eric back.

Over the sound of people coming to order and regaining their senses, Wes heard his morpher bleep. He frowned. The only person likely to be contacting him was...Jen, which could mean nothing good. If it was anything unimportant, she'd have waited until they got in holoscreen contact. Stepping away from the massed crowd, he acknowledged the call.

"Wes?"

He felt his heart and stomach clench. Jen looked terrible. That could only mean there was something wrong with their family. _Please, not Lexia or the baby..._ "What's up -- are you OK?"

"It...it's about Lexia."

~*~

Nadira chewed her lip. Something was wrong with Trip. She could feel it. There was nothing she could pin down. His absence from the Quad could be for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that he could have mustered on the other side of TFHQ. But still, she knew there was something wrong. She was barely aware of Kimberly standing beside her; barely aware of Wes suddenly moving away from them. All her thoughts were directed to the one person not there.

__

Where are you? she wondered. _What's happened to you?_

"Coming through!" yelled a voice. "Medic! Coming through!"

Automatically, Nadira took a step backwards to allow the medic and the anti-grav gurney he was pushing to come by. Then she froze.

"Oh my..." For a second, her knees threatened to give out as she recognised the green haired form lying on the gurney. "Trip!"

"Ma'am -- please step back," ordered the medic. "We need to come through."

Nadira hadn't realised she'd stepped forwards. "You... That's my husband."

"Well we need to get your husband to the medical centre," the medic replied. "You can come with us if you like, but we really need to get through here."

"I'm..." Nadira began, half turning to Kimberly even as she started to follow the medic.

Kimberly offered her a nod. "Go -- I'll tell Lucas what's happened."

"Thanks -- I...I'll be in touch." Then Nadira's attention wholly shifted to the gurney. Trip was unconscious. The bandaging around his head suggested the cause. What worried her more was the immobilisation field. Modern medicine could heal even bad spinal tears, but that didn't prevent a chilling fear from setting in. They feared the worst. _Not that...Anything but that..._

~*~

Lucas sighed inwardly. _It really sucks being the highest ranking officer around here,_ he groused. _And don't these people **know** what the drill is in an emergency? _He sighed and betted that under similar circumstances, junior ranked Silver Guardians wouldn't mill like this. _Eric, Wes and Jen won't let them._

Having seen to matters on the Quad -- and having dispersed the junior officers to their correct muster points -- he returned to where Wes and Kimberly were waiting and frowned. Where was Nadira? And what on earth had happened to Wes? Lucas couldn't remember Wes ever looking so angry and dazed at the same time. _Must be something to do with his family,_ Lucas noted with a grimace. _Not good._

As he got closer, Kimberly said, "Nadira's gone to the medical centre."

Lucas felt a surge of annoyance which he did his best to swallow. It wasn't Kimberly's fault. "Why?"

"Trip's been hurt," Kimberly answered, and Lucas felt a surge of guilt for his annoyance. "I didn't get a good look, but it certainly looked like a head injury at least." Lucas grimaced. "She said she'd be in touch."

"And she will," Lucas mused. He sighed. "It's just one more thing."

"Do you know what's happened?" Wes asked suddenly, startling Lucas.

"I have my suspicions," was all he said. "We need to get..."

"Major Kendall!" The voice was nasal and grating. It was not one Lucas knew. To his complete surprise, though, Wes stiffened at it. "Major Kendall!"

"Who is it?" Lucas hissed.

"Sounds like that sonovabitch lawyer who represented Merle Askot," Wes answered. "Holy fuck."

And then Lucas saw the reason for Wes' exclamation. It **was** Joshua Carmen. _This cannot conceivably be good._ "Mr Carmen."

"Did you get my message?" Carmen asked, panting slightly, presumably from the effort of hurrying across the Quad. Lucas just gave him a blank look, although inwardly he guessed this was probably what Trip had been going to tell him. "Clearly not. I..." But whatever Carmen had been about to say, he thought better of it. Instead he said, "The supreme court have appointed me as Captain Myers' advocate."

"Advocate?" said Kimberly. "Why does he need an advocate? This is all a load of..."

"Kim!" Lucas sighed. "That's not going to help," he added more gently. To Carmen, he said, "The trial hasn't been arraigned..."

"It was done this afternoon," Carmen said, interrupting. "They're moving very fast on this."

__

No shit, Sherlock, Lucas found himself thinking. Aloud, he simply said, "That isn't legal."

Carmen shrugged and had the grace to look at least faintly apologetic. "I'm sorry but I was given the brief; the trial starts at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow morning."

"What!?" Kimberly's exclamation was understandable. She now took a step forward. "Now you listen to me you...you...court-appointed...flunky! This whole damn mess is a set up! Now just you..."

"Kim!" Lucas intervened before the angry woman could start throwing punches. Carmen looked taken aback. "This is Captain Myers' wife."

"Oh."

"I want to see my husband," said Kimberly, visibly trying to restrain her temper.

"Carmen, are you telling me the truth about this trial?" Lucas asked.

"Yes...unfortunately I am." 

"So SOP states that the accused may have visitors, yes?"

"Ye-es," Carman answered, hesitating.

"You're not sure?"

Carmen shrugged. "Everything about this case is non-standard. But I've been given no instructions to the contrary. So I presume the visiting clause applies. But I can't be sure."

Lucas was aware of Wes staring at Carmen as if he'd crawled out from under a rock -- which was a little strange, given that so far, Carmen's responses had been not unreasonable. _Of course, I didn't have to watch Carmen try to roast my fiancé on cross-examination. That might make me view the guy a little differently._ "OK. Then, Mr Carmen..."

"I will get on it straight away," Carmen finished. "Give me fifteen minutes to arrange it all."

Lucas nodded. "Good." The situation was anything but. Carmen nodded and departed rapidly for the court buildings on the far side of the Quad.

"What the hell has the court appointed that shyster for?" Wes muttered.

"What do you think?" Lucas answered. He could feel a migraine coming on. "Besides, like him or loathe him, he is a reasonably competent lawyer." Wes snorted. Lucas sighed. "It's not like we seem to have much choice." Wes said nothing. "Wes, I don't like it any more than you do, but my hands are tied at least until I can get into my office and nail the supreme court for going over my head and," he inclined his head in the direction of TFHQ, "that's not going to be happening any time soon."

"You think this explosion is part of everything else?" Kimberly asked.

Glancing around, Lucas dropped his voice, "I think it could well be." He sighed. "I don't know for sure, but I think it was Jackie's lab that went up, and that's too much like coincidence for me."

That news did more to tame Kimberly's temper than anything else. "That's..."

"The kids weren't there." Lucas' words were confident, but inwardly he had doubts. "That's what the ID checks were about -- and I suspect that's what the fire alarm was about." He knew he was speculating wildly, but it did fit together, and more importantly, Kimberly didn't need any more worry unless it was strictly necessary. Kimberly nodded, but she looked far from convinced. Lucas sighed. "C'mon. Carmen will have my pager details. You guys could probably use the chance to freshen up -- and Wes, at any rate, needs to get into uniform."

"Kendall, you're a sadist," Wes muttered.

Lucas shrugged and smiled faintly. "Sorry, but them's the rules." _At least for now._

~*~

Alice felt tired, hungry and uncomfortable as the boxy cargo transport came in to land. The journey hadn't been long but it had been cramped and that combined with the way the unfamiliar clothing seemed to cling and the fact that she'd been perforce to sit practically in Rick's lap the whole way served to make her discomfort complete.

It wasn't that sitting close to Rick was unpleasant. In fact, that was half the problem. It was a little too pleasant. Earlier, at the safe house, when they'd both changed from the Time Force uniforms into something less conspicuous, she'd caught a brief glimpse of Rick in just a towel as he'd moved from the bathroom to the bedroom to dress after his shower and for a full minute, she'd given serious consideration to jumping him there and then. He was kind, sweet, and thoughtful -- and on top of everything else, he had a body that the still-teenage portion of her brain had instantly termed heart-stoppingly gorgeous. The portion of her mind that had grown up was perfectly willing to agree with the teenage assessment, and tossed in its own assessment: He was built. And then reason had reasserted itself: This was her brother's best friend. By the time he'd joined her in the living room, she'd regained control of herself, but these close quarters were bringing back those feelings and more. She just wanted to relax against him, into his arms...and didn't dare, because that meant giving in, and giving in would be bad.

"Ali, are you OK?" Rick asked.

"Yeah -- fine." She didn't need to look at him to know he didn't believe that. "Worried about dad," she continued, feeling slightly guilty -- Eric had been the last thing in her thoughts!

"He's going to be OK," Rick promised. "Trust me."

"I know -- I do." _It's me I don't trust._

"Last stop," called Namir as the transport shut down. "Everybody out."

A moment later and the cargo hold's doors opened to enable Alice to climb out. As she did so, unfortunately, cramp chose that moment to attack her calf muscles and she'd have fallen but for Namir and Rob catching her.

"Ow," she groaned.

"OK?" Rick repeated.

"Yeah. Cramp." Alice groaned again. "Ow." She eased herself down onto the concrete and started to massage her calves, trying to persuade the feeling to return.

"C'mon -- if you come in, there's a free leg rub going begging," Rick offered. "Lemme..."

"I can manage." Alice didn't need to see the expression on Rick's face to know the words were a mistake. Too quick. Too brusque. "I..."

"OK then." Rick sounded hurt.

__

Damn. Alice winced and struggled to her feet, but Rick had already headed across the landing pad and into the nearby building, following Namir's path.

Rob, who'd stayed with her, offered her a sympathetic smile. "Oops?"

"Oops covers it," Alice agreed. _Way to screw up, Ali._

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	6. Punish

Punish

Gina studied John's profile and sighed. Anger, she was used to. She could deal with his ego and attitude quite nicely. But this...? In all the time she'd known him, John had always worn his emotions visibly. As a child, he'd been an extremely easy person to 'read' -- and that certainly hadn't changed courtesy of Frax -- so this blank look had to be deliberate to mask something else. 

"John, what's wrong?" Gina asked quietly.

"Nothing. Worried about dad." 

Gina frowned. It was an abrupt response, which was in character. The reason was plausible. So why did she not buy it for a second?

At that moment, Lexia walked into the administration office. She looked tired and her face was puffy from crying, but in Gina's eyes she looked better for all that. The haunted, scared expression in her eyes had dimmed. It hadn't gone completely -- only time would truly erase it -- but even this was a vast improvement.

"Mom asked me to tell you about a meeting this evening," Lexia said.

Gina's eyebrows lifted. "A meeting?"

Lexia shrugged a little stiffly. "I think it's something to do with Unc...um...Commander Myers."

"Ah." Gina nodded at that. That made sense. Major Kendall had asked that the Guardians, as much as possible, covered for the various absences, so this meeting was presumably to work out the fine details of that.

"She also wants to know if you need me for anything?" Lexia continued.

Gina smiled and shook her head. "If your mom wants you for something, be my guest."

"Thank you, Gina." Lexia looked self-conscious as she said it, but there was a real sense of gratitude to the words.

With that, Lexia left the office, and from John's work station, there came a sigh. Gina glanced across at John in time to see a deeply unhappy expression on his face just before he managed to blank it.

Gina felt her heart sink. _Oh no._

~*~

Kimberly barely managed to stifle a giggle as Wes appeared, dressed in the blinding white of a Time Force uniform and looking a mix of sheepish, uncomfortable and long-suffering.

"God I hate this uniform," he muttered, flopping down on the apartment's couch.

"It, um..." It was no good. Kimberly giggled. "It doesn't suit you," she finally managed.

"I know." Wes sighed.

Kimberly sobered. "Think Lucas will be long?"

"No idea -- sorry."

Lucas had brought them to this apartment -- Time Force senior officers' quarters -- but had departed rapidly in answer to a summons on his pager, saying only that it was Carmen and that he'd be back as soon as he could. To start off with, Kimberly had busied herself by familiarising herself with the apartment. Most of it was straight forward, but the kitchen took some time and she wasn't too sure she entirely understood the 'fresher yet. 

Then there had been getting changed into clothing native to this time -- and that was an interesting experience. When she'd been a teenager, before her journey to Florida, she'd been into clothes and fashion. She'd held vague dreams of pursuing a career as a fashion designer -- before her gymnastics had taken the serious turn it had. That had pushed her plans on hold, although she'd still liked fancy clothing and shopping for it. It had taken Dirk and then motherhood to wipe that love away. And it had never really returned. When you never really knew what your day held in store -- anything from house or garden work to fighting off hordes of robots -- jeans and a t-shirt was always the best way to go. But here, that wasn't an option -- unless she wanted to get constantly stared at.

Before he'd left, Lucas had indicated what was considered to be standard, casual wear. It consisted of a pair of dark grey leggings made out of a material that looked as though it ought to be very heavy and stiff and proved to be as light and stretchy as lycra without being lycra. Over that was a sleeveless tunic that fell to mid-thigh and was made out of the same material. The one she'd picked out was a muted russet colour, although the wardrobe she was making her selection from contained options in forest green, dark teal, khaki, pale navy blue and burnt umber. All muted colours. _Wonder what the reaction would be to someone in a livid floral print?_ Kimberly had found herself wondering as she pulled the tunic on. Black, flat soled ankle boots made from something that felt like very soft leather, went on her feet, then completing the outfit was a sort of shawl made of a lighter material but of the same colour as the leggings.

All in all, Kimberly reflected, it was a flattering, stylish outfit. _But not practical if you're running around after an active child._ She shook her head. Maybe childcare was different here. Maybe mothers wore different things.

__

Wonder what Eric will say when he sees me, she wondered. _Wonder how much longer Lucas will be._

Wes' sigh pulled her from her thoughts. She glanced over to see a distant expression on his face. His thoughts were obviously miles away. _Or maybe years._ As concerned as Wes was over Eric's predicament, she was fairly sure this introspection had little to do with Time Force conspiracies.

"Wes?" He jumped and looked a little guilty. "Do you want to talk about it?"

~*~

The task force's headquarters were set in what had once been a factory complex. Between them, Rob and Ven had turned it into a more than serviceable base. The main room, Ops, had once been the main factory floor. It had been turned into a spacious area that was part conference room, part lab. In the middle was a horse-shoe-shaped table which could seat anything up to twenty people comfortably for briefings and the like, while around the edges were a variety of workstations and computer terminals. Radiating out from Ops was a series of hallways that led to a couple of smaller work rooms, a medical centre and comfortable living quarters.

As he entered Ops, just behind Alice, Rob made a quick scan of the room and saw that everyone was present. Ven was sitting at the conference table, the datapad before her told him that she'd been working prior to their arrival. Katie and Al were both standing together in the doorway that led back towards the living quarters -- they had been forced to make this into their home when it became apparent The Master was targeting them. Namir, Rick and Alice were standing next to them, Rick and Alice both looking slightly overawed. The final member of the team, Hawking, was sitting at the temporal analysis work station. He had his back to proceedings and Rob had his doubts whether the temporal expert was paying any attention to events. Almost as if to disprove that, though, Hawking suddenly turned round to face the gathering.

"I guess," said Rob, "a few proper introductions are due -- then we can get down to work."

"Slave driver," cracked Al, a faint smile on his face.

Rob rolled his eyes but had no need to retaliate as Katie elbowed her husband in the ribs and hissed, "Behave, you."

"Moving clockwise around the room, this is Dr Simon Hawking, Dr Ven Evora and Katie and Alan Drake -- Namir's parents," at that Alice, at least, suddenly looked knowing. "People, this is Rick Collins and Alice Myers."

"Who's a whole lot bigger than the last time I saw her," Katie commented. "Guess you don't remember me?"

Alice looked a little sheepish. "Not really. Kinda vaguely."

"There'll be a chance to catch up over dinner," Rob promised. "For now -- we need to get to work. Alice, Lucas told me your specialisation was strategy and tactics." At that she nodded. "OK. If you go with Al -- he and Nam have been looking over the information we've got so far, looking to see if there's any sort of pattern to it." Alice nodded. "Rick, I've got a computing challenge for you -- hacking into Time Force's computer system."

"Second time today," said Namir with a grin. "Piece of cake."

Rob's eyebrows lifted. "No, don't want to know."

~*~

Wes looked at Kimberly.

"Sometimes," she continued, "it helps to talk -- and you helped us so much when we were having trouble with Alice."

Wes winced. That was a little too close to the truth. Kimberly must have seen his reaction, but she chose not to press -- and suddenly Wes knew how Eric had felt all those years ago, when he'd confided what had happened to him in Kosovo. Before he'd even realised it, he found himself saying, "It's about Lexia."

Kimberly said nothing, letting him compose his thoughts.

"Mirracon...and Frax did something to her." Wes looked down. "When Frax aged them he offered Mirracon the choice. One of the kids would be his for his little scheme. Mirracon hit on Lexia." There was a bitter irony to that phrase and he snorted. Impotent anger finally overcame the sense of shock and helplessness that had been prevalent since Jen's comm. contact. A surge of energy took him up off the couch and he found himself pacing like a caged tiger.

"What did he do?" Kimberly asked gently.

"She doesn't know," Wes answered, only barely avoiding yelling. "She doesn't know what he did. What they did..." He trailed off.

"What does she know?" Again Kimberly's question was soft.

"He played on her insecurities and her confusion and made himself out to be a way for her to get even." He turned to face her. "She was physically seventeen with none of the memory implants. All she could remember was her brother teasing her the morning she was abducted. And he twisted that into something obscene." His pacing took him across the room and at last his anger found a target. He lashed out, driving his fist into the wall. "She was still a little girl inside," he snarled. "Just a little girl with the body of an adult." He drew his arm back to slam his fist into the wall again, only to find it prevented.

"Don't punish yourself," said Kimberly softly, her hands gently gripping his arm.

"Why not?" Wes snapped, roughly pulling free. "Or did you forget how she ended up in Frax's hands in the first place?"

"This is **not** your fault," Kimberly retorted. "Not your fault, not mine, not Eric's, not Jen's. The only person who is at fault here is the man behind it all."

Wes stormed away, across the room once more. She was right. That didn't make him feel any better. Any less helpless.

"All **we** can do," Kimberly continued, "is make sure that we get the son of a bitch behind all this and make sure he pays -- and pays dearly."

"Easier said than done."

"I know." Wes could hear the sympathy in her voice and it went someway towards thawing the anger. "I know it's not going to be easy. But we will do it."

~*~

Alice looked at the datapad of statistics, then at the holo display of the globe that was hovering over the centre of the circular table and frowned.

"You know you can display those stats on the globe if you want to," Namir offered.

"It might help." She punched the send button on the datapad and duly a rash of little red dots appeared on the globe.

"What're we looking at?" Al enquired as he entered the work room bearing a coffee pot and three mugs.

"Ransik's holdings," Alice answered. She pushed the send again, and a new set of dots, this time in green, appeared. "With the known locations of Arachna's operation. I thought there was some sort of correlation," she explained. "But looking at them all up...I'm not so sure." 

Al frowned at the display. "There is something there. Something..." He sighed. "No good staring at it. Won't make it any more apparent." 

"Nope," Alice agreed, helping herself to a mug of coffee. "Do we have any kind of breakthroughs at all?"

"Well," said Namir, "we know that The Master has a serious grudge against our parents."

Alice sipped her coffee and smiled wryly. "I sorta meant in addition to that."

"Nothing much," Al answered. "Some of the data we'd managed to collate -- Nam and I -- did suggest that they'd be making a move on Eric. There'd been a high instance of old files being looked over. I...understand that certain of the files in Major Kendall's department file store have been flagged to alert people if unauthorised viewers look at them." 

Alice blinked. "Why on earth would that have been done?"

"The flagging?" asked Namir. "That's easy. Alex Collins was paranoid." There was a strange flicker of something on Al's face at that statement, something Alice couldn't quite place. "Not without good cause, either," Namir continued, "given most of what happened to him in the last two years of his career. And it's just as well he did. Otherwise we'd have had no warning about Eric's situation."

"Not that what warning we got let Lucas do much," Al mused with a sigh.

"A little bit is better than nada," Alice replied. "We'll find him."

~*~

Lucas led Carmen up to the apartment Wes and Kimberly were staying in.

"Nice," Carmen murmured, looking around.

"Perk of being a senior officer in Time Force," Lucas replied, somewhat tersely. "Are you positive there's no other way they'll allow Kim to see Eric?"

Carmen offered a sigh and a grimace. "Unfortunately, yes. I know what that place is like and it's the last place I'd want to take a lady, but it is temporal offences he's been charged with."

Lucas inwardly cursed again. The place they were referring to was the Temporal Offenders Institute. Most prisons were grim places, but the TOI was the worst. It was one of the oldest institutions on earth -- some of the buildings dated back more than a thousand years, and while they had been renovated, they still looked like exactly what they were: An early nineteenth century corrections facility. It was also a good two hour journey from Central City. _Which is time Kim's out of my protection,_ Lucas mused, reaching the top of the stairs. _I don't like it at all._

At the top of the stairs, Lucas turned right and walked the few paces it took to finally reach the apartment door. He knocked. A moment later and a sombre looking Wes answered, although his expression brightened on seeing Lucas.

"News?" Wes asked.

"Some," Lucas agreed.

"Come..." Wes trailed off, presumably as his eyes fell on Carmen.

"Wes," Lucas muttered softly, threading a warning into the word.

Without bothering to finish his sentence, Wes turned on his heel and re-entered the apartment.

"He doesn't like me," Carmen observed sotto voce.

"You did your damnedest to discredit his wife and represented Merle Askot," Lucas retorted.

"Oh." Carmen said no more.

"News?" Kimberly asked, as Lucas entered the living room of the apartment.

"Some," Lucas replied, repeating his answer. "Carmen?"

Carmen jumped. "Oh -- yes. Um." Lucas rolled his eyes. "I've been able to arrange a visit for you, Mrs Myers."

"Good. When?" Kimberly asked.

"Where?" asked Wes.

"Eric's being held in the Temporal Offenders Institute on Dartmoor," Lucas answered. "Before you ask, that's in Europe."

"What?!" Wes looked stunned. "Why the..."

Lucas held his hand up to stall the rest of Wes' question. "Something to bear in mind, transportation's come a long way from what you know. You can circle the globe in less than ten hours."

"When?" asked Kimberly, stone-faced. "I don't care where it is. I don't care if I've got to walk there and back, **when** can I see my husband?"

Lucas sighed inwardly. There would be no persuading Kimberly not to go. _Never thought there would be._ "When you're ready. Mr Carmen is going to escort you there and back -- and no, you won't need to walk."

"Then let's go," said Kimberly. "Mr Carmen?"

Lucas watched them leave.

"You're letting her go with him?" Wes was incredulous.

"And you propose I stop her exactly how?" Lucas retorted.

"I don't trust him."

"You're biased Wes." _But I don't trust him either._

~*~

John could feel Gina watching him. It was slightly unnerving. Why couldn't she leave him alone? He needed time to think. To sort through everything he was feeling. Everything had come at him at a rush. His father's words. Then his father's 'arrest'. Then his mother and sister both going off after his father. Then Lexia and her 'relationship' with JJ. Too much. 

Much too much.

And it wasn't as if there was anyone...

"I'm an idiot!"

"I'm pleading the fifth," Gina commented.

John started. He hadn't intended to say that out loud. Looking round, he saw Gina looking amused. "Sorry."

Gina waved the apology off. "Not a problem. Is it anything I can help with?"

"No...but...um...is it OK if I make a phone call?" Gina nodded, eyes wide. "Thanks." _Figure he ought to be able to help me -- I know he used to listen to Alice when she was having problems with the 'rents..._

~*~

Even the marvel of crossing the Atlantic in under an hour and the unquestionably scenic trip from the shuttle pad to the location of the TOI couldn't distract Kimberly from the bleak grimness of the stone corridor she was now following Carmen along. She shivered. Why was Eric being treated like this? 

Almost as if he was reading her thoughts, Carmen said, "The crimes your husband's been charged with really are very serious. There isn't a lot of scope for him to be held anywhere else."

"I thought it was innocent until proven guilty," Kimberly retorted.

"And if he were charged with murder?" Carmen asked. "In your time period, homicide suspects are remanded this way, are they not?" Kimberly nodded. "Temporal violations carry the same penalties."

There was nothing Kimberly could say in response. Carmen was right. That didn't make it any more palatable.

They walked on in silence for a few more minutes before Carmen came to a halt outside a door. "This is it. I'll wait outside -- I know that you and your husband will want time together." So saying, he opened the door for her and ushered her through.

"Ah, Mrs Myers." The man waiting inside the room was tall, bald, thin and dressed in the uniform of a prison guard. "Intendant Hordak. Please, take a seat," he gestured to one of the two seats in the room, "and I'll go and fetch your husband." And he smiled.

Kimberly shuddered inwardly. The smile made the Intendant's face look skeletal. Outwardly, though, she managed to return the smile. "Thank you, Intendant."

He nodded, turned and exited through a door opposite the one Kimberly had entered through. She sat down and looked around. Like the rest of the prison, it was painted a dull grey, while the only furniture, two seats and a table separating them, was all firmly bolted down. Homely, it wasn't. Somewhat surprisingly there was no apparent surveillance equipment, but she would have bet her last nickel that there were hidden microphones and cameras. _Which means the conversation has to be limited -- just in case._ She sighed. _Still, limited is better than nothing._

A rattle heralded the Intendant's return and the door opened. Kimberly felt a surge of happiness, but that happiness turned to ashes when her eyes fell on the creature that followed the Intendant into the room.

She had thought that the worst she would ever see Eric look was the way he'd looked when she'd found him in Zafar bel Abis' compound, back before they were married. She now realised she was wrong. Clad in a baggy, grey prison overall, Eric looked terrible. The overall made him look small and vulnerable -- and while that might have been something of an illusion, the pallor of his face, underscored by dark stubble, wasn't. Nor was the glazed look in his eyes, or the deep shadows beneath them.

"Take a seat, Captain Myers," said the Intendant.

Eric sat. Mechanically. Kimberly felt sick. _What the hell have they done to you, Eric?_

~*~

"So that's the situation as it stands right now." It was the end of a very long day, as far as Jen was concerned, and this was the final act: Working out how best to cover the various absences.

Michael Zaskin winced. "Essentially, you're telling me it's my research that's gotten Eric into trouble?"

"That's the excuse they're using, Michael," Jen replied. "To be honest with you, it's so much bullshit you could grow roses for a year with it." Zaskin didn't look any happier.

"In the meantime," said Ben, "while Kim, Wes and Lucas are getting this whole mess straightened out, we've got to cover for their absence."

"Wes is easily covered," said Gina. "Mr Collins has arranged a business trip to the Biolab facility in Medicine Hat. As far as anyone in Silverhills is concerned, Wes has gone on that."

"The tricky thing," said Jen, "is covering for Eric's absence."

"Maybe not," said Paul thoughtfully. "Seeing as both he and Kimberly are gone, if anyone asks, they've gone on holiday -- or on a second honeymoon. Something like that." 

"God knows the amount of shit that's been tossed their way recently, they could probably do with it," Jen agreed.

"So that's their absence covered," said Taylor, "what about the work?"

"Jen should..." began Ben, but Jen was already shaking her head.

"I've never done the work Eric does. Normally, if he's off work, Wes comes in to cover it. But you've done it, Ben," she continued.

"But..." Ben began. "What about my job? Last time I did it, I covered both, but I sure as hell can't do both now. We're not going to be doing any training until Eric gets back."

"I'll do it," said Taylor. There was a moment of stunned silence. "What? You think I can't do it?"

Paul buried his face in his hands, presumably so that no-one could see his sudden attack of the giggles, but the fact that his shoulders were shaking gave the matter away. Gina was only barely more restrained than her husband as she turned a lovely shade of purple through her efforts not to laugh. Ben choked. Even Jen had to fight for a few moments to make sure she didn't laugh out loud. Only Zaskin, who'd never had much to do with Taylor, and Taylor herself remained unaffected.

"What?" she asked irritably.

"Taylor, honey," Ben began. "No offence..."

"You don't think I can do personnel." Taylor said it flatly, but Jen recognised the mulish expression on her face and winced. "You were the one who was pushing for me to take a desk job."

"But not...I don't...it's not..." But Ben floundered.

"What's so difficult about it that you think I can't do it?" Taylor asked, now well into her stride. "Writing up the shift rosters? Please. I can do that in my sleep."

"It's not that," said Jen, stepping in before Ben found himself sleeping on the street. "That side of things is something I would imagine you could do -- and well. It's..." Jen crossed her fingers. "It's that a lot of the job entails being able to relate to people. The other Guardians have to be able to know that they can go to the personnel rep and be able to talk to them -- and know that they're going to get help for their problems."

"I can do that!" Taylor insisted.

"It's not a job I want," Paul threw in, having finally managed to control his laughter. "Whole reason I became a Guardian was to avoid getting stiffed with a desk job."

There was a silence after that.

"Is there anyone else?" Gina asked.

"Only Ian Foster," said Ben. "And he's not available anyway -- he's gotten this bug that's going round."

"And he wouldn't do it anyway," said Jen with a sigh. "He's no more a fan of desk jobs than Paul." This had all the hallmarks of being an Enormously Bad Idea. _But, when you're out of other options, take the one you're presented with._ "OK. Taylor -- if you really think you can do this..."

"I can."

"...then I guess we're settled," Jen finished.

~*~

Yawning, Alice headed towards the living quarters. Her eyes and head ached from staring at electronic lists. The globe, with Ransik and Arachna's locations still hung, glowing ghostly, over the table, but neither she nor Namir nor Al had come up with what the relationship was between the two sets of data. She pinched the bridge of her nose, vaguely aware it was a habit she'd picked up from Eric, and groaned. Namir and Al had long since departed for bed, but the desire to find The Master and so find a way to free Eric had kept her at the task. But she'd now got to the point where no amount of caffeine was likely to keep her awake, so she'd see what good a night's sleep would do.

As she reached Ops, though, she realised that she wasn't the only one still up. Rick was hunched over a computer terminal. The rapid clicking of the keypad and the whir of the cooling system the only sounds.

__

This is your chance, a little voice said. _Apologise._

"Either come in or go out, don't hover."

How had he known she was there? Before she could think better of it, she walked in. "Hi."

Rick visibly jumped and emitted a noise Alice could only define as a squeak. He turned around to face her. "Don't do that!"

"Sorry -- I thought, since you knew I was there..." Alice shrugged.

There was an awkward silence.

"Look I..."

"Rick, I..."

Both spoke at once. Then stopped. Rick gave a wry chuckle. "You go first."

Alice swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Damn but he was handsome. _Quit with the hormones. Apologise, damn it! _"Look...about earlier. I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to snap."

Rick shrugged and smiled a little as he folded his arms across his chest. "You were tired and you'd gotten a cramp. You had every right to be grouchy. I overreacted. I'm sorry."

There was another awkward pause while Alice wavered between leaving, which she knew she ought to do, and staying, which she really wanted to do. _Oh get a grip! This is Rick. There's nothing to be scared of._ Was there? "So..." Alice crossed closer, congratulating herself on her practical grasp of the situation. "How's it going?"

He swivelled the chair back toward the monitor. "As well as something like this can," Rick began, nimble fingers gently tapping keys. "It's a needle in a haystack search..." 

"In a field full of haystacks?" she suggested wryly, trying to keep things light and trying not to think about how nice his hands looked.

"And it's a world with a lot of fields," Rick finished with a wry grin. "How 'bout you?"

"Same," Alice admitted. "It's frustrating. There's something there...and I can't pin it down." Something on the screen caught her eye. She frowned and leaned closer. "What've you got there?" But as she breathed in, she caught the faint scent of spicewood that seemed to be uniquely Rick, and lost her train of thought. Her breath caught in her throat. And then again as she became aware of Rick looking up at her quizzically.

"It's the finances of the TI unit," he answered, brown eyes studying her face. 

Alice quickly tried to school her expression, almost painfully aware that her attempts weren't working. She stepped back, trying to buy some breathing space in a room that suddenly seemed far too airless, but even as she did so, it enabled Rick to get to his feet.

"Alice..." he started. 

She backed up again and then again, until she was up against the conference table. He kept moving towards her and she found herself mesmerised. When had he cultivated that panther's walk? _What the heck's Fos been teaching him?!_

"Wh-what?" Alice winced at the breathy quality to her voice. That didn't even sound like her. Something flared in Rick's brown eyes, and she gulped. "Rick..." It was supposed to be a warning. It sounded like a plea.

He smiled as he took one last step, putting himself firmly in her personal space. There was no room for escape -- and in truth, Alice wasn't sure she wanted to. She stood, trapped between Rick and the table, and licked her lips nervously.

He leaned forwards, just fractionally, a hand reaching up to cup her jaw. "Alice...?"

His touch melted the last of her resistance. Something of that must have shown on her face, because he smiled that smile that made her stomach do a flip-flop, leaned in and kissed her.

~*~

Wes was asleep when Kimberly returned to the apartment, but Lucas wasn't. He'd waited at the apartment, and was sitting in the living room, checking his messages, when she walked in.

"Kim? Are you..." But he trailed off as he saw the shell-shocked expression on her face. "What happened?"

"I don't know," she whispered, dropping into the nearest seat. "He looked... It wasn't him, Lucas. It wasn't the man I married. They've done something to him. He was so out of it...he didn't even know I was there." And then the tears started to fall. "Why? Why did it have to be him? Hasn't he suffered enough?" 

But Lucas had no answers. Awkwardly he moved to wrap his arms around her, letting her cry into his shoulder, offering the only comfort he could. "We're going to beat this, Kim. We'll get him back. I promise."

~*~

The court was packed the following morning. Row upon row of gawpers and gossips crowded into the public gallery. This case was big news. Not only was it a Time Force officer being charged with temporal violations, it was one who was stationed in another century. Wes gave them a disgusted glare as he took his own seat. 

Kimberly hadn't even given them that much. She sat rigid in her seat, her face pale, her expression hard and unreadable, eyes firmly fixed at a spot on the wall straight ahead. Wes knew the visit hadn't gone at all well, although Lucas had been vague about the details.

A murmur running through the court heralded the arrival of the defendant. Wes looked round and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Eric looked awful. His face was so pale as to be lurid while the Time Force uniform he was wearing was so badly fitting that it contrived to make Eric look feeble and frail. But what really struck Wes, as Eric was manoeuvred into the blue force-field-shielded area of the dock, was the completely vacant stare. _It's like the lights are on and no-one's home,_ he realised, bile hitting the back of his throat. _What the hell've they done?_ And a new thought hit Wes. _Was this what Kim saw last night?_ It must have been. Small wonder, then, that she was so upset.

"In the matter of the people versus Captain Eric Myers, the court is now in session."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	7. Rescue

Rescue

"In the matter of the people versus Captain Eric Myers, the court is now in session."

The austere tones dragged Wes' attention to the triad of judges. All three were gazing solemnly at the packed courtroom.

"We will hear the Prosecution's opening remarks," stated the chairman.

Slowly, Director Kerin, who was leading the case for the prosecution, got to his feet. He was a short, podgy man with a moustache so bushy and fierce it looked as if he was using it to make up for the distinct lack of hair on the rest of his head. He looked almost like a caricature, particularly given the almost cartoonish look of disgust and enmity on his face, but Wes wasn't laughing. This was the man who held all the cards at the moment.

Kerin paced towards the triad, arms behind his back. "I stand before the court, tasked with leading the case against this officer of the law who is alleged to have committed such heinous crimes against the system. It is my express intent to demonstrate this man's guilt beyond all reasonable doubt or question and so shall ensure he receives the maximum penalty for his crimes.

"The defendant stands before this court accused of flouting some of our most important legislation. He stands, no less, accused of conspiracy to commit temporal homicide and actual homicide on no fewer than four occasions..."

"Four?!" Kimberly's exclamation was soft but no less outraged for the lack of volume. All Wes could do was shrug helplessly. She knew as much as he did.

"First, and most grievously, by exhorting an untrained, untried and untested civilian to handle a weapon of incredible power that she was unquestionably incapable of handling and that had been entrusted to him."

"Chauvinistic bastard!" Kimberly muttered.

"Second, by exhorting the same untrained, untried and untested civilian to further compound that first offence by handling a second weapon of incredible power -- one that even now, she continues to handle.

"Thirdly, by permitting a civilian scientist in his employ to investigate and research material such that the timeline comes under attack from paradoxical development of technologies that should otherwise not exist."

"Huh?!" Kimberly blinked.

"He means Zaskin," Wes answered. "Wonder if he's getting paid by the syllable."

"Fourthly, this man stands accused of murder in the first degree..."

"What the hell...?!" Kimberly only just barely kept her exclamation sotto voce. "This is ridiculous!"

"Kim," Wes warned, wishing Lucas was present and vaguely wondering why the other man wasn't here.

In the meantime, Kerin had continued and they'd both missed the explanation of the murder charge. "Lastly, any other such charges as the ongoing investigation into this man's misdeeds may bring to light."

"In other words, when you've thought of some more shit, you'll pile it on," Kimberly muttered. "I know where I'd like to stick it."

"Tribunal," Kerin concluded, "I aim to demonstrate all of this over the course of this trial. This man is a dangerous criminal and should be treated as such."

"Thank you, Director." Kerin nodded and retook his seat. "The Tribunal will now hear the opening remarks for the defence."

Carmen stood up. Wes couldn't suppress the shudder that ran through him at the sight. The last time he'd seen the lawyer stand up with such deliberation it had been Jen in the witness box, and he couldn't shake the feeling that all was not right with Carmen's motives and methods now, either.

"Tribunal, I stand before this court, defence attorney for an innocent man. A decent, honourable individual who has given of himself in the pursuit of justice time and time again. A man who has, when Time Force have asked him to, put his own life in jeopardy so that those of us living in this present might continue to live in safety and security. He is not a criminal. He is certainly not a murderer. I fully intend to demonstrate that any offences that may have been committed were acts not of an evil, scheming felon, but of a man pushed into circumstances beyond his control by forces bigger and more dangerous than any that any other person in this courtroom today has faced -- or will ever face."

Despite himself, Wes was impressed. The situation last time round had prevented him seeing how good Carmen actually was when it came to legal speaking, but here and now, that talent was blindingly apparent. Where Kerin had sounded puffed up, pompous and longwinded, Carmen was clear and concise. More to the point, in one sentence, Carmen had neatly summarised that while some of the offences might actually have happened, they weren't done with malice aforethought. 

__

Let battle commence.

~*~

Katie watched the way Alice and Rick were bantering over breakfast from the dining room doorway and wondered if she was the only person who saw it. It was nothing obvious. No traded glances, no gestures, and yet there was something about the way they were exchanging jokes; something about the words they spoke to one another as opposed to the ones they shared with everyone else.

"They remind me of a couple I used to know," said a voice in her ear, just as Al's chin came to rest on her shoulder.

"Uh-huh." Katie smiled and shifted a little so that she could still keep an eye on the diners, but also look at her husband. "They do, do they?"

"Yup. Young, in love, not caring that the time's wrong or that what they have isn't right."

"Or that the man she loves is technically dead," Katie tossed in sotto voce, smiling to take any sting from her words.

"That's them," Al agreed, smiling back. He shifted until he was in a position to drop a light kiss on her lips. "Think they can be as happy as we are?"

Katie kissed him back. "Sure hope so."

"Ewwww -- mom! Dad!" Namir groaned. "Get a room!"

"I have a better idea," said Alice. "How about we three go get on with the search?"

"Sounds like a plan, Ali," Rick answered. "C'mon Nam."

Before Katie or Al could say a word, the trio of 'kids' departed for Ops and beyond.

"Good idea," said Hawking, also heading for the door. "Need to keep an eye on the timeline and such."

"I'm all for it," Ven contributed. "C'mon Rob -- need your help finishing off the medi-centre. I can't move those bio-beds by myself."

Al blinked. "Something we said?" he asked as Rob and Ven's footsteps died away.

Katie laughed and wrapped her arms around him. "C'mon. How often has it been in the last six weeks that we've had time alone like this?"

"Hmm -- you have a point there." Al sighed. "I probably should go help."

"I think Alice and Nam can cope. At least for a couple of hours." Katie offered him a smile. "I've got a better use for you."

~*~

John eased down onto the stool. He felt horribly out of place in the bar, but it had seemed like a good place to meet.

The bartender eyed him suspiciously. "You got any ID?"

"He's with me," said a fresh voice before John could find his Guardian identity card. "And we'll both have Cokes." John looked round to see Rocky smiling at him. The bartender grumbled a bit and produced the two drinks. Rocky paid. "C'mon," he said to John.

Within a couple of moments, they were both seated in a booth well out of the way.

"So," said Rocky. "You said you wanted to talk -- what's on your mind?"

Presented with a bald opportunity to talk John found his mind going a complete blank, and there was an awkward silence.

"Well, what's it to do with?" Rocky asked presently.

"Dad. Mostly."

Rocky didn't look terribly surprised. "OK."

"And...there's this girl, too."

Rocky looked even less surprised. "OK."

John looked down, staring meditatively into his Coke. "It's all mixed up." He sighed. "Dad's pissed at me. I screwed up, big-time, yesterday."

"What did you do?"

"I...broke bounds." And haltingly, John explained about finding out that Lexia was in trouble and running off after her, only to need rescuing by her. As the story wound down, he added, "And although dad didn't say it this morning, I've been acting like a real asshole the whole of the last few weeks...and all dad's been trying to do is avoid me being compared to him... And now he's in deep shit and because of what I did yesterday, I can't help."

"Why not?" John tapped the cast around his wrist. "Oh."

"And...then there's Lexia," John continued. "She...I...thought...we..."

"You like her," said Rocky shrewdly. "I mean really like her." John nodded. "And either she doesn't like you in the same way or..."

"She's...with someone else. I think." John felt his cheeks beginning to burn. "I kinda walked in on them."

"Ouch." John looked up to see a real look of sympathy on Rocky's face. "It's never fun to find out that sort of thing."

John said nothing.

"I remember, when I was in school, there was this girl in my class. Really pretty, really smart, really funny...I had the biggest crush on her, right from the time I first set eyes on her. But she didn't feel the same way about me. She liked me, but all she saw was what everyone else saw -- the class clown. And it hurt -- that she couldn't see beyond that -- but if it let me be a part of her circle of friends, then OK...I'd take what I could get, and maybe I could change her mind."

In spite of himself, John said, "What happened?"

"Well, she moved out of the area -- her parents were vets, and they were signed up by a wildlife charity to work in Africa for three years, so away she went. And I thought that was my last shot...until I bumped into her again in college three years later."

"And?"

"And this time, away from being who I'd been in school, she saw me for me...and we got married when we graduated from college." Rocky finished, smiling. John's face fell. "John, relationships are never easy, particularly under the circumstances you're in right now. You want my advice," at that, John nodded, "so here it is: Be the best friend you can be. Be there for her. Help her when you can. She may very well never feel the same way about you. That happens. I was lucky with 'Sha."

"It's hard," John answered.

"Yes, it is," Rocky agreed, not without sympathy. "But, as cliché as it is, if you really do care for her, you'll let her pick her own path."

John sighed and said nothing.

"If you don't," Rocky continued gently, "you'll lose her altogether."

~*~

Lucas was waiting outside the courtroom as the lunch recess was called.

"How did it go?" he asked as Wes and Kimberly headed towards him.

"About as good as we were expecting," said Wes with a grimace. "Where've you been?"

Lucas smiled humourlessly. "Identifying a body and speaking to Nadira -- and I'm not sure which depressed me more."

Kimberly paled. "Body?"

Lucas started to lead them out onto the Quad. "The explosion was in Jackie Bennett's lab." He sighed. "Only one victim. As Jackie was semi-officially attached to Covert Ops, and seeing as she had no official next-of-kin, Medical had me in first thing to confirm it was her." It had been an archaic formality -- DNA testing would confirm what he'd seen -- and he couldn't help but shudder as he recalled the gruesome sight he'd been treated to first thing that morning. It wasn't helped by the sure knowledge that Jackie's death after helping to smuggle Alice and Rick into this time **had** to be connected to things he'd asked her to do. _Guess I'm starting to know how Alex ended up in that bar._

"Lucas?"

"Are you all right?"

He blinked and realised that Wes and Kimberly were both regarding him with concern. He dredged up a faint smile. "I will be." He sighed and steered them towards the bagel stand. "Lunch?"

Kimberly shook her head. "I'm not hungry."

"And you're not fainting in court this afternoon because you haven't eaten anything all day," Wes retorted before Lucas could open his mouth. "Eric will kill me." 

Kimberly shut her mouth with a snap, although she looked mutinous.

Lucas shook his head. "Wes is right. What'll you have?" Shooting Wes a dirty look, she reluctantly pointed out a plain bagel. "Wes?"

"Same, thanks."

"Guess none of us have really got an appetite today, huh?" Lucas observed as he bought a bag of plain bagels. "Thanks Zek," he added to the blue-skinned individual running the stall.

"No worries, Luca'," the man replied, cheerily. "Accla maz'ni!"

"Accla maz'ni," Lucas answered, forcing a smile.

As they moved away from the stall, Kimberly asked, "What did that mean?"

"Just means 'good health' in Duros," Lucas replied, offering the bag of bagels to her. "Zek is from Rylse IV so it's his native language."

"Cool." Kimberly wrinkled her nose at the bagel she'd selected. Wes gave her a look. She sighed and bit into it.

"How was Trip?" Wes asked, accepting his bagel.

Lucas grimaced. "In a mess," he answered, taking a seat on a nearby bench. "He was in surgery to repair a type three spinal tear when Nadira called me."

"They're not fucking around," Wes murmured, stunned.

"No. They're not," Lucas agreed. The bagel in his hand looked even less appealing than ever.

~*~

Alice could feel Namir's gaze on her as she worked, sorting through more piles of statistics in the hopes of finding something useful.

"Nam, what's the matter?" she finally asked, looking up. "You've been staring at me for the last twenty minutes."

"I was wondering...can I ask you a question?"

Alice chuckled. "Sure -- I'll even let you have another for free."

"What? Oh." Namir looked sheepish. "Sorry. Um...did you...were you...you were aged, weren't you?"

Alice put down the datapad in her hand. This was going to be a long conversation. "Yeah, I was."

"Does it...bother you?"

Alice offered a wry expression. "Some. Not so much for me -- I got of pretty lightly; I should be sixteen -- but for Rick, his sister Lexia and my brother John. They were just kids...and now they're not." She paused. "I guess that applies to you too."

"I should be ten," Namir agreed.

"It bothers you?" Alice asked gently.

"At first...not really. It was kinda cool...they gave me all sortsa stuff about how to disguise yourself and work undercover...so it was cool being able to sneak into places I wasn't supposed to be and stuff...but yesterday..."

"It stopped being a game."

"Yeah."

Alice looked at Namir and wondered what she could say to him that would make this better. Wished to high heaven at that moment that Eric was here -- he always seemed to know what to say. Well she'd been around him most of her life. Surely she could come up with something. "You're scared. It's OK to be scared. It is frightening. There's this guy out there who hates our parents so much that he's tried using us to get to them, and who has enough power to pull some serious shit with the law-makers in this time. I don't know about you, but that scares the hell out of me. But," she continued, "as scared as I am, I know that if I'm not here, doing this, then The Master has a better shot at wrecking someone else's life." 

"What about Jackie?" Namir asked.

Alice picked her words carefully. "As cruel and as hard as it seems, Jackie knew what the risks were for helping us. You knew her." At that Namir nodded. "Can you imagine her willingly standing back, knowing this was going on?" Namir silently shook his head. "So what we have to do is make sure that what she did for us isn't a gesture in vain."

"Can we do that?" Namir asked.

"Yes, we can," offered a new voice from the work room doorway. Looking up, Alice saw Al standing in the doorway, his expression unreadable. She wondered how long he'd been listening, and suddenly found herself blushing. Al smiled reassuringly. "We will. Because the alternative is unthinkable."

~*~

Lucas had expected the trial to be a complete sham and show. A quick, academic exercise with Eric being instantly convicted and sentenced. Which just proved that Kerin, and whoever had orchestrated this whole mess, was one step ahead, he decided as the third day of the trial drew to a tedious close. Three solid days of legal wrangling, points of order and brinkmanship. And the worst of it was, there was nothing that Carmen could do, but go along with it and try to match play for play with Kerin.

"It's not Eric."

It was almost the first thing Kimberly had said since lunch on the first day of the trial, and it startled Lucas more than somewhat.

"What isn't?" Wes asked.

Lucas followed Kimberly's gaze and watched as the guards started to lead Eric from the courtroom. "Kim?"

"That isn't Eric," she repeated. She suddenly fixed her gaze on Lucas. "I'm positive."

"Kim...I know you don't want that to be Eric," Wes began.

"It isn't." She sighed. "I know my own husband...the way he moves...that isn't Eric."

Lucas frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Watch him," Kimberly replied. "Watch the way he moves."

Lucas looked round and watched as Eric finally left the courtroom. There did seem to be something odd to his gait but nothing Lucas could swear to. Beside him, Wes groaned softly. "You see something?"

"Lucas, what are the chances of Eric being drugged?" Wes asked.

Lucas felt his flesh pucker. "He shouldn't be. That constitutes..." he stopped. "Carmen's the best person to ask about that one, but it has huge legal implications."

"Then, either they're fouling up or Kim's right."

"I am right," said Kimberly firmly.

Lucas felt sick. "Then this just got a whole heap worse."

~*~

Rick pounded away on the keyboard. Three frustrating days and all he'd achieved was more statistics than anyone could possibly have a use for. He now knew, to the litre, how much coffee Time Force consumed, broken down by department, or how many doughnuts each precinct ate, or even how many accidental discharges of blasters per month there were.

The one thing that had looked promising, the finances of Temporal Investigations, had vanished into computer spaghetti and while he was still tracing it, it was taking forever to untangle. Meantime, he was stuck rooting out more useless data in the hopes that **something** might prove helpful.

An electronic _ding_ registered that a new message had hit the comm. account the task force was using. An update from Lucas, most likely. Pausing in his keypad abuse, he switched his attention from the terminal he was using to the one that was set up as a permanent comm. terminal. Sure enough, in the inbox was a fresh message from Lucas. Judging by the return path, the message had been bounced around the system to some purpose -- which meant it had been sent from a public terminal. Rick felt a chill creep up his spine. So far Lucas had avoided public terminals, preferring to take the time to properly disguise the transmission, which meant this was a message sent in a real hurry. And that couldn't possibly mean anything good.

He opened the message, which was just a short, text memo. Lucas hadn't even bothered with recording a voice transmission, which was normally the minimum standard. It contained less than ten words:

Step up search; we are snafu. L.

For a few moments, Rick stared at the screen, absorbing the words. Snafu. Situation normal, all fucked up. It could mean anything, including "The trial's almost over, we've lost", but he was reasonably sure that wasn't the case. He'd seen Lucas' last missive, sent the day before, and that had given every indication that the trial was going to be long and complex. So this meant something else, and it definitely wasn't good.

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED... 


	8. Release

Release

Lucas groaned as he looked over transcripts of the trial. Ten days it had been running. Tomorrow would see the final round of witness questioning, which would include Kimberly's testimony, then after that it would be summing up and then would come the verdict. And unless Kimberly's testimony was spectacular, that verdict was going to be guilty. Kerin was a pompous windbag, but he also had the whole case sewn up neatly and no matter what Carmen had tried -- and Carmen had tried plenty -- there were no holes in the case. 

__

Of course, there are one or two bits of Kim's testimony that might pull this out of the fire, Lucas mused. Not least was the accusation that Eric had been the one to suggest Kimberly used the Quantum Morpher and subsequently Jen's chrono-morpher -- which Lucas knew Kimberly could, and would, disprove. But would it be enough to sway the judges?

Then there was the task force's hunt for the real Eric -- and Lucas was convinced now that the man who'd been in court every day of the trial so far wasn't really Eric. If they succeeded...well, that was the case voided and maybe this whole nonsense would be over. _Or probably only just beginning._

He looked up, briefly, from the transcripts. Kimberly had curled up on the apartment's couch. She'd said she couldn't sleep, although she was currently making a lie of that statement, seeing as she was fast asleep. The case had taken a huge toll on her, though. She was only eating if he or Wes prompted her to. She was barely sleeping. _God knows what it'll do to her if this verdict comes back as guilty._ Lucas shuddered.

He turned back to the transcripts. _Too many ifs. _He sighed. _Way too many ifs._

~*~

The globe. Everything kept coming back to the globe that displayed Ransik and Arachna's assorted holdings and hideouts. Everyone who'd looked at it was sure there was something to be seen in it, but no-one could put their fingers on what that something was. In the last two weeks, Alice had stared at the display so much she could practically draw it in her sleep. And still the answer eluded her.

"Staring until your eyes bleed isn't gonna get us closer to the answer," Rick commented gently. Looking up, she saw him standing in the doorway of the workroom, smiling sympathetically.

"I know." Alice offered him a wan smile in return.

"But it's your dad and time's running out," Rick filled in.

"Am I getting predictable?"

"Well it's what you've said every single night this week," Rick admitted. Alice winced. He shook his head. "It's OK."

Alice started to push away from the table, intending to call it a night. "Oh. My. God." Alice stared at the part of the globe facing her. Europe. The British Isles. "Rick, what do you see there?"

"I see about six red dots and five green dots." He frowned. "There are clusters like that all over. What's so special?"

Alice jabbed her finger at the globe. "They're in a perfect ring."

"That can't be the only place that happens."

For answer, Alice manipulated the display controls, asking the computer to just display instances of perfect circles of the hits.

"Holy shit..." Rick breathed as the whole globe went dim apart from that one ring. "Ali, you're a genius."

~*~

Taylor looked around the office. 

Ben's office. 

Her office. 

It had been hers for two weeks, and on the basis of the news from elsewhen, it looked as if she might be keeping this role. 

She hoped not.

And not just because of what that meant as far as Eric was concerned.

Nor was it because she couldn't do the job. It had taken a few days for people to really believe she wasn't going to eat them for breakfast -- that she really could listen and be helpful -- but within the first week, they had stopped showing up expecting to be sautéed. As for the rosters, they were the expected cinch. No, she didn't want to keep this job because it would mean she stopped being an active guardian.

__

I'm not ready to retire from that side of things. But circumstances were conspiring against her. Patrolling was for the young. The fit. The not pregnant. She was thirty-five, coming up to thirty-six, and while that didn't make her old and while she was still as fit as she'd been at twenty-five, she **was** pregnant. She'd reached the deadline for active duty. She now **couldn't** patrol -- not until Dr Jackson cleared her to. After the baby's birth.

"Hey," said Ben from the doorway. "Not working late?"

Taylor managed a smile. "No -- ready to go when you are."

"OK?"

"Just thinking." She sighed. "Hormones." _Sorta._

Ben nodded, smiling knowingly. "Hormones, or just annoyed you can't go hit things?" Taylor stared at him. "C'mon -- there's a hot dinner with your name on it, followed by a foot-rub and a hot bath."

Taylor found herself chuckling. "OK. OK. That sounds good." She shook her head. 

She mightn't want to retire, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

~*~

Kimberly stood at the apartment window and looked out across the still-alien skyline of Central City. Behind her, Lucas was snoring softly, slumped amid his datapads. She smiled faintly. _Wish I could sleep like that._ But she couldn't. Hadn't been able to since Bunton and Chisholm had started this nightmare two weeks earlier.

__

Eric... She shuddered as she recalled the state he'd been in when she'd visited the TOI. Had it been him or had that been the clone? She wasn't sure. She'd been too shocked to take note of any clues there might have been. Part of her hoped that it had been the clone she'd seen -- as Wes had said, she didn't want it to really be Eric that was suffering like this -- but on the other hand, if it had been the clone, what did that mean for Eric?

__

Nothing good. 

"Kim?" Wes' voice was soft.

She glanced over her shoulder to see him standing in the doorway of the living room. "You OK?"

In the dim light, she couldn't see his expression, but from the soft snort, she guessed he was probably faintly amused. "I should be asking you that."

Kimberly turned back to the view. Dawn was breaking over Central City. Today was the day. "He's your friend."

"He's your husband."

Touché. "I can't be 'OK'. Not until I know where he is. How he is." _I may never be OK._

"We'll find him, Kim. He's going to be all right." But the words sounded tired. Trite.

"Two weeks is a long time," Kimberly answered.

"He's come through worse," Wes reminded her.

"Kosovo left him shattered. It took him years to put the bits back together."

"He's got you, and Alice and John to help him this time."

"Only if he wants the help, Wes." And that was what it boiled down to; what she was most afraid of. That when they found him he'd be too far gone. Too lost.

"He will." But Wes didn't sound as certain as perhaps he'd have liked.

~*~

Rick yawned. His eyes burned from a combination of too much caffeine, too long spent under harsh lighting staring at a computer screen and no sleep, but the burn had never felt so good.

"Done it," he murmured. "Ali!"

The sound of running footsteps told him she was on her way from the kitchen where she'd been brewing yet more coffee. "What've you found?" she asked.

Rick span around in his seat to face her and smiled. "Pay dirt."

Alice looked as if she didn't quite dare to believe him. "What is it?"

Rick turned back to the screen. "The ring of hits circles the Temporal Offenders Institute, right?"

"Right."

That had been the first piece of data they'd uncovered. "Well, give you three guesses what Time Force asset was recently -- as in last twelve months -- sold to a private company."

"The TOI," said Alice promptly, coming to peer over his shoulder at the screen.

"Got it in one." Rick nodded. "I traced the private company, Era Management. They proved to be just a shell, purporting to be run by one Jack Scotts."

"Biocon." Alice shivered. "I remember the name."

"You were six," observed Rick, looking surprised.

"I got around," Alice retorted. "Go on."

"Well, he's dead. We know he is. We have five different witness testimonies to that, plus Alex Collins' close-up of the case. So what's a dead man doing running a company? Answer, he's not. Era Management is one of Arachna's former holdings."

"The Master bought the TOI."

"Yup." Rick entered a command and data streamed across the screen. "But it gets better. Give you three guesses which department got the windfall of cash from the sale."

"Temporal Investigations." The data stream stopped to display a roll call of five names. "What's that?"

"That," said Rick, "is the entire TI department -- at least," he amended, "the ones on Time Force's books. Director Kerin, his deputy, Major Schmitt, Lieutenant Bunton -- one of the two who picked up your father and who's been strangely MIA since; Lieutenant Chisholm -- the other guy who arrested your father and who's also been MIA since; and this guy." He jabbed at the screen. "No rank, no serial number, just a name: Hordak."

"Small department."

"Yep." Rick typed another command. "Next thing was to track down Bunton and Chisholm. Which proved to be easier than I'd figured. Bunton's body showed up a day or so after we hit this time." So saying, he displayed the death record. "It's just taking Civ-ad the usual delays to update his personnel record."

"OK, what about Chisholm?"

"More interesting still." Rick punched up another death record. "According to this, Evan Chisholm, lieutenant of Time Force Crime, was killed in the line of duty, ten months ago."

"So either we have a zombie, or we've got more replicants," Alice judged.

"More replicants," Rick replied. "Given what your mom told Lucas."

"OK. Schmitt checks out?"

"Yep -- as does Kerin, unfortunately. But," Rick continued typing in another command, "Hordak is another kettle of fish."

Alice whistled as the data on Hordak slowly scrolled across the screen. "Listed as an employee of three different Time Force departments, known explosives expert... What's the betting he blew up Jackie's lab?"

"I don't bet on certainties. I came across a chunk of extremely well buried witness statement from someone who said that they'd seen Hordak walk into Jackie's lab about ten minutes before the explosion." Rick turned to face Alice. "I'm betting he's the one in charge of the TOI."

Alice lifted her eyebrows. "What makes you say that?" For answer, Rick displayed a final screen of data, and Alice's eyes widened. "Former lover of Arachna and sometime associate of Ransik..." She shook her head.

"It's almost enough," said Rick, "to make you think we've found The Master himself."

"Or if not," Alice answered, "he's one really, really big link in the chain to getting The Master." She met his gaze. "Looks like we'll be paying Merry Old England a visit."

~*~

John rolled his wrist. It was so good to finally be rid of the plaster.

"Any pain?" Jackson enquired, putting away the plaster cutter.

"No -- it's fine. Bit stiff."

"That'll wear off." Jackson smiled. "I won't sign you straight back for active duty -- I want you to take it easy for another couple of days."

John nodded and sighed. Returning to active duty was something he was viewing with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he'd feel like he was able and ready to help his father -- if the need arose -- on the other hand, it would be harder to avoid JJ and Lexia. 

"No growls of complaint?" Jackson almost sounded disappointed. John smiled faintly. "Wonders will never cease. I'll see you on Friday." There was a pause, then Jackson added, "Mini-me."

John rolled his eyes at the nickname, but somehow it wasn't as irritating anymore. _Maybe I'll be able to earn it properly..._

~*~

Rick finished his explanations for a second time and waited for comments.

"Wow." Ven shook her head. "And not in a good way."

"I wasn't entirely sure I believed all this conspiracy theory stuff -- thought it was Lucas being paranoid," Hawking commented.

"Nope -- it's real all right," Rick answered.

"Impressive work," Rob commented, offering a faint smile.

"Very impressive work," Al agreed.

"What now?" Katie asked.

"First things first," said Rob. "Rick -- you need to package up all the evidence. Download it, file it, print it...whatever you need to do so that we've got it all ready to hand over to Lucas."

Rick waved a hand at the bulging folder beside him. "Already done."

"Second, we need to figure out a plan of action. The TOI's not going to be an easy target to hit. Third, Alice, Rick, you two need to catch some rack time. The rest of us can do the planning." He offered them a smile. "We won't be going without you, but we need you as fit as possible."

~*~

Kimberly waited nervously in the witness' waiting room. She was scheduled to be the day's second -- and last -- witness, but the cross-examination of the day's first witness, yet another temporal expert, could take hours.

"Mrs Myers?"

__

Or then again, it could be over in five minutes, Kimberly mused as she stood up.

"This way please."

The court attendant led her out of the waiting room, into the main courtroom and over to the witness box. Part of her felt intimidated to be stood in front of so many people, and despite the tedious way the case had played out, there hadn't yet been a day when the public galleries had been less than packed and today was no different. Part of her was nervous at the prospect of facing Kerin's questioning. But any doubts and fears melted as her eyes fell on the occupant of the dock.

Just because it wasn't truly Eric standing in the dock -- and she knew with certainty that it wasn't -- it didn't mean that her husband wasn't in trouble and it didn't mean that he didn't need her to do this.

"Mrs Myers," Carmen began, "for the record, can you state how long you've known the defendant."

"I've known him twelve years," Kimberly answered.

"At the time when the first offence is alleged to have taken place," Carmen said, "you had known each other...?"

"Nine months."

"At that point in your relationship, how well would you suggest he knew you?"

"Objection!" Kerin bounded to his feet as he spoke.

The chairman of the tribunal panel lifted his eyebrows. "On what grounds?"

"Supposition."

There was a pause while the three judges exchanged looks. "Sustained. Mr Carmen, please rephrase."

Kimberly ground her teeth as Carmen nodded. "Yes, Tribunal. Mrs Myers, could you tell the court what exactly the circumstances were of the first offence."

"Eric and I were on our way home after a hospital appointment when he was called to go into the SGHQ to attend to something. Because of the circumstances..."

"Which were?" Carmen prompted. "What had the hospital appointment been relating to?"

"Objection!"

Kimberly wasn't entirely surprised this time.

"On what grounds?" asked the chairman.

"Relevancy."

"Overruled," the chairman responded, not needing to confer with his colleagues this time. "The crux of this charge is the circumstances in which the offence was committed. Please continue, Mrs Myers."

~*~

Al looked at the holograph of the TOI and winced.

"It's fucking impregnable," he muttered.

"Nothing's impregnable," Rob retorted.

Al gestured to the lines of fencing and the lie of the land. "Two fences, APMs between 'em; it's in a valley... We approach that; we get our asses blown off. If by some miracle we don't get shot up on the approach, we get done between the two fences...and while all that's kicking off, they have more than plenty of time to hide anything we might have come for."

"There's other ways of getting in places than the obvious," said a new voice.

Al looked around to find Alice in the work room doorway. "You should be..." he began.

"Tried. Can't," Alice answered. "I'll catch some more en route."

"What did you have in mind, Alice?" Rob asked.

~*~

Kimberly took a moment to collect her thoughts, then continued, "Eric had suffered a broken leg four weeks earlier. We had been to the hospital that morning so that he could have the plaster removed. The rest of the Silver Guardian hierarchy knew that, so I knew that if they had phoned Eric, something very serious had to be going on.

"When we got to SGHQ, we were met by Gina -- the Silver Guardian receptionist -- who told us what had happened, or what she knew about what had happened during the first Mutorgs' attack..."

"Which was?" prompted Carmen.

"Which was that the Silver Guardians' weaponry was completely useless against the Mutorgs and the battle had been a near disaster."

"Objection!"

"On what grounds?" came the inevitable response.

"Hyperbole."

"Mr Carmen..." began the chairman.

"I submit to the court historical documentation from our archives about the mentioned attack. In it, it clearly states that of the twelve man team dispatched to deal with the Mutorgs during that first attack, eight out of the team were injured, three of them critically." So saying, Carmen placed the datapad he was holding on the tribunal panel's bench.

The triad of judges looked over it and nodded in unison. "Objection overruled," said the chairman. "Please continue, Mrs Myers."

~*~

Namir watched as preparations were made and sighed. He felt useless now. Not a Ranger and not experienced at fighting, there was no way he was going to be included in the party. The only non-fighting member of the team would be Ven -- and she was going only on the basis that an assault like this was unlikely to pass off without any injuries at all.

"Nam?"

He blinked. His mother was standing in front of him, looking hesitant. "Mom?"

For answer, she produced a small, cube-shaped box and held it out. "Lucas gave this to me, to give to you if necessary."

Namir frowned and accepted the box. "What is it?"

"Well if you open it, you'll see," Katie responded, trying to smile. The smile didn't quite work.

Wondering what on earth it was, Namir opened the box, and found a morpher of the same shape and style as the ones both Rick and Alice wore. "This is...?"

"The fifth morpher of the set," Katie answered. "It's yours."

"I...I'm gonna be a part of this?" Katie nodded. Namir found his stomach suddenly filled with nervous anticipation and excitement. "Really?"

"Really." Katie sighed. "You take care, Nam. This isn't a game."

"I know, mom." He wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. "And I'll make sure dad comes home in one piece, too!"

~*~

Kimberly took another moment to gather her thoughts. "I knew Eric well enough at this point to know that, doctor's orders to the contrary, he was going to step in and use the Quantum Morpher in the hopes that he would be able to make a difference."

"A difficult situation." Carmen started to pace. "When did the suggestion of someone else using the morpher come up?"

"There and then," Kimberly answered. "Gina was the first person to suggest it."

"What was Eric's reaction to that suggestion?"

Kimberly frowned for a second. What had Eric said? That was it: "It's not that simple. That was exactly what he said."

"What happened then?"

"Eric limped off towards his office. I promised Gina that he wouldn't do something 'silly', then I followed him. I knew that if Eric did it -- used the morpher and tried to fight the Mutorgs -- he was going to wind up seriously hurt." As Kerin twitched to object, she added, "All the training in the world doesn't make you a good fighter when you're injured, and Eric was facing six weeks of physical rehab at that point because of his broken leg. And the reason I know that is because the doctor spoke to us both before they took Eric to have the plaster removed." _Object to that you son of a bitch._

Carmen's expression suggested he had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. "OK. Describe what happened in the office."

"Eric and I talked. I understood his point of view. At that point I didn't know that the Quantum Ranger's weaponry wouldn't be much better use against the Mutorgs than the Silver Guardian blasters, but anything had to be better than letting the Mutorgs trample Silverhills."

"When did the suggestion of you using the morpher instead of Eric come up?"

"During that conversation."

"Who made it?"

"I did."

~*~

Alice knocked on the door of the bunkroom before entering. She wasn't entirely surprised to see Rick wasn't asleep.

"Are we ready to go?" he asked.

Alice nodded. "We're off in fifteen minutes -- or however long it takes you to get ready."

Rick smiled faintly. "OK."

"Think we can really do this?" Alice asked as he rolled off his bed.

"I don't just think it," he answered. "I know it. We're gonna do this." 

"Sure hope so, Rick," she replied softly.

He gently pulled her into an embrace. "It'll be OK -- trust me."

~*~

The revelation that she had been the one to suggest her usage of the Quantum Morpher provoked a muted gasp from the galleries.

"Not Eric?"

"Not Eric."

"What was Eric's reaction when you suggested it?"

Kimberly found herself smiling. "He said 'You've got to be kidding'."

"So it would be a fair assessment to say that he disliked the idea?"

"He hated it."

Another, less muted, gasp ran around the courtroom. Kimberly was well aware that her testimony was running completely contrary to virtually every word of the prosecution's case now. _But I was actually there. Kerin wasn't._

"What made him change his mind?"

"I reminded him that it wouldn't be the first time I'd been a Ranger -- that I'd done it before, and that it wasn't something you forgot how to do."

There was a stunned hush at that. _Not so untrained, was I,_ Kimberly thought, her gaze briefly coming to rest on the completely poleaxed Kerin. 

"For the court," Carmen said, "could you clarify that last statement."

Carmen was enjoying this as much as she was.

"I was a Power Ranger."

"Objection!" Kerin finally managed.

"On what grounds?" enquired the chairman in a tone of voice that suggested Kerin was trying his patience now.

"Fabrication. There are no records of Mrs Myers ever having served as a Power Ranger beyond the two occasions being disputed."

"Fabrication is an inadmissible objection in this court," stated the chairman. "However," he continued, "Mrs Myers, I believe Mr Kerin is correct in saying there is no record of you having ever been a fully sanctioned Power Ranger, so perhaps you might like to offer further evidence?"

It might have been phrased as a suggestion, but Kimberly knew it was offer it or have to strike that information from the court record. "I grew up in Angel Grove, California. When Rita Repulsa escaped from her intergalactic dumpster, Zordon of Eltar," at that, a murmur ran around the room, "called five teens from Angel Grove to protect Earth from her. I was one of them. I served for two years before leaving Angel Grove for Florida."

"It is true that the very first Earth Rangers are, even to this day, anonymous in our databanks," said the chairman.

"I have one other piece of evidence to offer," Kimberly continued. From her pocket she produced the Pterodactyl power coin. "May I?"

"You may approach the bench."

Nervously, Kimberly stepped up to the bench and handed the coin over. "I'm told you have the others in a museum, but that the pink one vanished. This is it."

The tribunal panel all studied the coin while Kimberly returned to the witness box.

"I have a feeling," said the chairman, "that historians may very well wish to interview you at this trial's conclusion, Mrs Myers. Objection overruled. Please continue, Mr Carmen."

Kerin looked livid. Carmen offered her a smile. "So. You reminded Eric that you'd been a Power Ranger before; that, in essence, you knew what you would be doing. What was his reaction?"

"He agreed to turn the morpher over to me for the duration of the crisis."

"No further questions at this time." Carmen took his seat, only barely managing to swallow back his grin.

"You have the witness, Mr Kerin," said the chairman.

"No questions at this time," Kerin bit out.

The chairman nodded. "Witness is released. Thank you Mrs Myers. The court will now adjourn for lunch."

~*~

Alice lay just on the crest of the hill, hidden behind some spiky bushes, and looked down on the TOI. It had sounded formidable when planning this raid in the relative comfort of the task force HQ. It looked worse now that she was actually there. Just with the naked eye, she could see the warty protrusions on the perimeter fencing that indicated laser emplacements, the armed guards patrolling just beyond that, then another fence, watch towers... And that was just the defences she could see. There were other, invisible defences too, like infrared sensors, motion sensors, APMs buried in the yard and between the outer and inner fences, not to mention the permanent teleportation dampening field that all thirty-first century prisons were equipped with.

"Whoever heard of breaking into a jail?" she muttered, wriggling backwards until she was well hidden by the rise of the hill.

"How's it looking?" asked Rob.

"Tight," Alice answered. "This ain't gonna be easy." She sighed. "But easy is not the way of the Jedi, huh?" Rob looked blank. "Right. Star Wars isn't big here."

A few moments later, Al and Namir returned. Their expressions told Alice they'd had no luck in spotting any weaknesses. Alice felt her heart sink. _There's got to be a way in. Somewhere._

The final member of the team, Rick, returned soon after. Unlike Al and Namir, though, he was grinning.

"You found something?"

"A way in," Rick replied. "But it's going to be Rangers only."

"Tell me it's not the ever clichéd garbage chute," Al groaned.

"It's not the garbage chute."

"It's the sewage pipe," Alice guessed.

"Got it in one, Ali," said Rick. "It's gross, but it comes out the other side of the far hill, so you haven't got to worry about being visible as you approach."

"OK." Alice looked around the group. "We're going to need to find another way out -- can't bring Eric back through that."

"Once we're ready," said Rick, "just give me five minutes with the computer systems and that's not an issue."

Alice nodded. "OK."

"What about finding Eric in that heap of bricks?" Rob asked.

"My first task," said Rick.

"When we know what cell he's in, it's going to be a snap to get there and get him out," Alice put in. _I hope._

"What do you want Al and me to do?" Rob asked.

"No point in a distraction," said Al thoughtfully before Alice could say a word. "That would just alert them that someone was coming."

Alice gave him a speculative look. Here and now was the wrong time to raise her suspicions but the moment they were back to the task force headquarters... Aloud, she said, "Right. Definitely no distractions." She glanced at her watch. Eighteen hundred hours. Night would be falling in a couple of hours. They had to be out of the TOI by then or lose the cover of darkness to get out of the area. "If we're not back in two hours, get going. Get back to Central City and hand all of this information over to Lucas." Rob looked as if he wanted to argue that point, but Al was already agreeing. "'Kay -- Rick, Nam, show time."

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	9. Unscathed?

Unscathed?

The trek round to the sewage outlet took a bare five minutes, something which Alice was pleased about. She was less pleased by what she found at the outlet. Thick, foul smelling effluent was flowing, a couple of feet deep, from a pipe that was no more than three feet in diameter. She wrinkled her nose in general disgust. _Tight squeeze._

"In our time," she commented off-hand, "this would be illegal."

Namir gave a humourless laugh. "It is now, too."

"Sure looks like it, Nam," Rick observed.

"We have two hours," said Alice. "Let's do this."

She pushed up her sleeve and uncovered her morpher, a gesture matched by both Rick and Namir. She glanced at them both. Rick looked calm but sure. He offered a fractional smile as she met his gaze. Namir looked nervous at the prospect, this would be the first time he'd morphed, but he managed a nod.

"Vengeance descends!"

There was a flash of light and a burst of energy and the morph took hold.

"Whoa!" Namir's exclamation made Alice smile. "What a rush."

"Sure is," Rick agreed, a chuckle in his voice.

"Let's go," said Alice. "I'll go first. Nam -- you follow. Rick, you come after Nam."

"Got it."

Alice grimaced as she stepped into the sludge flow, grateful that neither Rick nor Namir could see her expression. _You can do this. _The current was surprisingly strong, and even despite the air filters on her helmet, the smell was nearly suffocating. _Don't think about it, just do it._ She lowered herself into a crouch and started to inch into the pipe.

Behind her, she heard the muted splash that heralded Namir's entrance into the flow, closely followed by a half gasp/exclamation that indicated the smell had hit him. She didn't have the heart to tell him that once he got into the pipe, it was even worse. He'd soon know.

~*~

Kimberly felt nervous as she took her seat for the afternoon session of the trial. She'd done her bit. Carmen had been delighted with it. So had Lucas and Wes. Kerin had been seething. That was all she could have done, so it was now in the hands of the judges.

"Major Kendall!" Captain Detourney, a member of Covert Operations, appeared. The normally placid woman looked agitated and, Kimberly decided, faintly excited.

"Marissa -- what's up?" Lucas asked. "We're just about to get under way."

"New evidence -- from you know who and where. You need to get an adjournment until Monday."

Kimberly felt her heart skip a beat. They'd found him?

"Any details yet?" 

Captain Detourney shook her head. "The message was 'Get adjournment -- K's case is about to be screwed!'."

Lucas instantly leaned forwards and relayed the message to Carmen, who nodded. "OK, thanks Marissa -- we'll do our best."

Captain Detourney smiled and departed, her job done, leaving Kimberly on the edge of her seat.

"It's going to be OK," Wes murmured, giving her hand a squeeze. "It really **is** going to be OK."

~*~

Alice half crawled, half swam against the current, hauling herself along the pipe and concentrating her attention on the scanners that were inbuilt in her helmet. If she focussed on that, on checking for defences and sensors, then she wasn't thinking about what she was crawling through. It did help that thanks to the pitch darkness she couldn't see it, but every now and then she'd come into contact with something that was just barely solid and that reminded her of exactly what they were moving through.

Behind her, Namir had long since stopped reacting. The first mile or so had been punctuated by small gasps, which had gradually turned to whimpers and then to silence. Alice could sympathise but she couldn't spare the breath or effort to comfort him. It was hard going and she needed all her energy for the onwards journey which, for the last half mile, had been steadily up hill.

"Ali, I'm picking up comm. voice traffic," Rick noted, presently. "We must be almost there."

"Really?" Rick's news seemed to rouse Namir.

"Rick, what're they saying?" Alice asked. "There's an access hatch just up ahead, but I don't want to take it if it's just going to bring us up into the yard."

"Working on it."

Alice stopped, just shy of the hatch, waiting for Rick's answer.

"It's chatter from the guards," he finally supplied, "but, given what I've just heard, this access hatch should be perfect."

"Care to explain that one?"

Rick offered a chuckle. "They're in the john. We're under the guardhouse."

"OK." Alice turned her attention to the hatch. Scanning it, she found no sensors and only a very elementary lock mechanism. _Not surprising. I mean, who's gonna be dumb enough to crawl through the sewers..._ "Rick, am I clear to open the hatch up?"

"Yep -- go for it Ali."

Carefully, Alice started to push upwards at the point where the lock was situated. It would have been easier to materialise her blaster and melt the lock, but with the assorted gasses in the pipe, that was not a great idea -- so brute strength was her only option. Moments passed then there was a sharp _crrrrrrrrack_ sound and the lock gave way.

She froze and waited.

"In the clear Ali," Rick reported without needing to be prompted. "Let's get the fuck out of this place!"

"You've got it." Alice shifted a little further up the pipe. "Nam -- you go first. Demorph and see if you can find us three guard uniforms."

"OK." Alice wasn't surprised to see Namir achieve something close to warp speed in getting out. 

"Rick, you next," Alice continued. "I'll follow."

"Got it."

Rick scrambled out of the pipe. Alice followed him and found herself standing in a cramped access hallway. Rick, still morphed, had his head cocked, clearly listening to more comm. chatter.

"What's up?" she asked.

"I thought we'd been made," Rick answered. Alice felt her heart stop. "But it was a couple of the guards talking about a holonet film they'd both watched."

"Richard Collins don't you **ever** do that to me again!" she hissed. "C'mon. Power down so's we're ready for Nam when he gets back."

Rick shrugged and demorphed. Alice followed suit. To her relief, the lingering smell finally vanished with her ranger suit, leaving the only signs of their crawl as a couple of footprints and the busted hatch.

She was just setting the hatch cover back into place as Namir returned, having already changed into his guard uniform, bearing not only two more uniforms but also a floor cloth. He smirked a bit at Alice's raised eyebrows.

"Figure we don't wanna leave footprints," he said.

~*~

"I hate waiting," Al muttered as he kept a close watch on the TOI.

Rob offered a snort. "Not as if we can do anything else."

"I know."

"I swear you didn't moan this much on stake outs."

"That's because my son wasn't walking in undercover," Al retorted. "It would have been me."

"Leaving the rest of us to stew," Rob finished. "Al, like it or not, Nam's an adult now. He's gotta make his own choices. Wes and Jen, Kim and Eric are in the same boat too, you know. Maybe when this is over you should..."

"I can't," Al cut in with a sigh. "It's hard enough keeping the charade up for people who barely knew me, like Hawking."

"You should have told them," Rob replied.

"Alex Collins needed to die. Shit!" Before Rob could ask for any explanations, Al was squirming rapidly backwards down the hill. "Hill patrol! We need to get under cover and quick or else everything's screwed."

~*~

As Alice had hoped, the uniforms allowed them to move through the guardhouse without anyone asking questions. Rick had managed to find Eric's location via the computer system and they had been able to head easily into the cell complex. Unfortunately, in the cell complex, they hit a snag: The area they needed to get into was highly secured. 

"There's no way we can sneak past all that!" Rick muttered softly as he returned to where Alice and Namir were waiting. "Cameras, probably IR scanners, motion sensors...all that plus a guard check point and at least one locked door. Fort Knox would be easier."

"Easy is not the way of the Jedi," Alice murmured. "OK. We've got two choices. We can try morphing and shooting our way in, or we find another way in."

"Ali, there isn't another way in," Namir objected. "We've already established that."

Alice offered Namir a smile. "Sure there is. Look around. What do you see?"

Namir frowned. "I see hallway. I see a broom closet..."

"I see a ventilation duct," said Rick, the look on his face telling Alice exactly what he thought of that idea. "We can't possibly all fit through that."

"We can't," Alice agreed. "I can." Rick opened his mouth to object. "Don't argue. The only other options are you create some sort of computer phantom -- which will be a one way trip -- or we quit. I'm not prepared to quit."

"And how are you going to get Eric out?" Namir retorted. "I don't know him, but I'm willing to bet he's bigger than you are."

Alice nodded. "He is, and he won't -- but he won't have to." She held up a hand to still more protest. "Listen. This is what I have in mind. At full power, the Ranger comm. channel isn't jam-able. It's also one hundred percent secure." Rick nodded. "I get in, find Eric and free him. When I do that, I can give you a signal via the comm.. **That** is where your computer phantoms come in, Rick. They'll get us either in, or out. They won't do both." Rick looked reluctantly agreed on that point. Alice glanced at her watch.

"You're going in morphed?" Namir queried.

Alice nodded. "Safest way." She looked at them both. "Objections?"

"I think you're nuts," Rick responded, "but you're also probably right."

Namir shook his head. "You know more about this planning shit than I do. If this is the only way..."

"It is." Namir sighed and nodded. "You've got forty-five minutes tops. If I haven't contacted you in that time, head back to where we came in and get the hell out."

"Just you make sure that doesn't happen, Ali," Rick warned. "I don't wanna have to explain this to your mom. She scares me."

Alice found herself chuckling as she stepped away from them to morph. "And what the hell do you think she does to me when I get in shit with her?"

In the time it took her to morph, Namir and Rick between them got the cover off the ventilation duct.

"Good luck," Namir offered.

"And you. Remember -- forty-five minutes. No longer." So saying, Alice climbed into the ventilation shaft.

~*~

Rob lay, barely daring to breathe, beneath a combination of bushes and camouflage netting in a shallow dip. The hiding spot had been picked out and set up, jointly, by himself and Al on first arrival. Both had hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

"Any ideas what we're looking for?" asked one of the searchers.

"Anything out of the ordinary," answered a second searcher tersely.

"Like?"

"Boss thinks there's someone out here."

"Think he's right?"

"I think you should stop asking questions and start looking!" the second voice snapped.

Under any other circumstances, Rob would have found the exchange funny, but with the speakers barely a foot from his position, it wasn't remotely amusing.

~*~

Even more so than the sewer pipe, the ventilation shaft was a tight squeeze. Before she'd gone more than five yards, Alice knew she was going to be covered in bruises when she finally demorphed, but there was little alternative. _Worry about that later; get Eric now._

She wriggled, climbed and crawled through the ductwork, grateful that for the most part, it was the original, twentieth-century brickwork rather than anything more modern. It meant that she didn't have to worry unduly about making a noise.

_Which is just as well,_ she decided as she whacked her elbow against the brickwork for the umpteenth time. Being morphed prevented it from hurting too badly, but it didn't prevent there from being a thud each time she did it.

She finally reached an intersection in the ventilation system and paused. Which way? She instantly discounted the duct that led off to the right because that led away from where she wanted to get to, but that still left two: The one to the left and the one straight on.

Instinct said to veer left. _But I wanna back that up with something a little more solid._

Across the bottom of her helmet visor a message scrolled: 

{Recommend switching to search and rescue mode.}

_Huh?_ Before she could do anything, her visor view shifted from displaying the inside of the ductwork to showing a scan of the whole immediate vicinity. A steady stream of readings flashed up the right hand side of the view.

{Analysis complete. Target is to left.}

_Whoa. What the hell?_

{Low-level Intelligence Asset. LIA for short.}

_Lia?_

In so far as blank text could look exasperated the next message did.

{LIA is installed in your transmogrification device as a back up option in situations where the user has not been fully trained.}

_You mean my morpher thinks?_

{Yes.}

Alice found herself smiling. _Cool._

{Temperature is irrelevant to current situation.}

_OK. You and me are gonna have a little 'discussion' about slang when we get done here._ There was no response from LIA. Alice started to take the left duct. _So how do you know what I'm thinking, anyway?_

{The user has a neural interface with the transmogrification device. LIA is programmed to pick up on certain types of neural transmissions.}

_You mean you read my mind._

{Yes.}

_Cool._

{Temperature...}

_Is irrelevant -- I know. You already told me._ Alice shook her head. This was going to take some getting used to.

Another hundred yards of crawling went by, then LIA flashed up: 

{Stop here.}

Alice looked around and found the vent cover. _Through here?_

{Yes. The only person in proximity to this location is the target.}

_And you know who the target is because you read my mind,_ Alice thought dryly.

{Yes.} 

Who knew blank text could look sheepish. _Do you only read my mind when I'm morphed,_ Alice wondered as she worked the cover loose, _or is it all the time?_

{LIA is programmed to detect specific forms of neural transmissions.}

_Guess I'll take that as all the time._ The cover came off, allowing Alice to slip out of the vent and into a grim, stone corridor. She shuddered. _Not a nice place._

{Target is in closest cell. Cell is locked.}

_Any suggestions on how to get through that?_ Alice wondered as she headed in the right direction.

{Chemical structure of door suggests composition is ninety-percent partially decomposed carbon. Entry will be easy.}

Alice blinked. What was that supposed to mean? Then she reached the door and the truth dawned. It was a wooden door, which, from the looks of things, was mostly rotten. _Wonder why Eric didn't bust out._

{Target is restrained.}

_Oh. Guess that makes sense._ Alice kicked the door. It imploded in a hail of rotten wood and metal bolts. _And if I can do that, you can bet your ass Eric could have done it, if he hadn't been restrained._

Stepping through the wreckage, though, she came upon a sight that stopped her cold. Eric had been chained to the wall opposite the door with his hands at such a height as to force him to either hang by his wrists or crouch. That would have been bad enough, but as her helmet display compensated for the poor light levels in the cell, she could pick out visible signs of neglect and maltreatment. 

"Dad?" Alice called.

Eric's head jerked up at her voice and Alice felt sick as milky, sightless eyes fell on her. "No more...you won't fool me again...you're not real...you can't be real...if I can't see you you're not here..."

"Dad -- what've they done to you?" Alice took a step forwards.

"Not real...not here...just a phantom..."

"I'm not -- dad, I'm really here. I'm gonna get you out of this. Get you home."

"Not here...just a figment...not real..."

_How do I convince him I'm real?_

{Suggest freeing target and demorphing.}

_How is that going to help?_

{Target is blind and/or mistrustful of sight. Therefore freeing target will permit him to use touch.}

_I'm an idiot..._ Wisely, LIA made no comment. She stepped up to Eric and crouched before him. "Dad, I'm gonna get you out of this." He flinched as she touched him. "Please -- you've got to believe me. I'm really here."

"I...feel you..." he whispered. "Are you real?"

The note of hope in his voice was pitiful. Alice had to swallow before she could answer, "Yes -- and if you'll let me get you free, I'll prove it to you."

"Oh-ok."

Alice reached up. With one hand she took hold of the chain that was securing his right wrist. With the other, she braced his wrist. "On three. One -- two -- three!" Under the full force of brute, power assisted strength, the chain snapped and gently she helped him lower his arm.

"Hurts."

"Sorry, dad. Gonna do the other arm now." So saying, she repeated the trick, freeing his left arm. Before the chain had even finished snapping, he started reaching for her, trying, instinctively, to use his fingers where his eyes were failing him. But all they came in contact with was the hard shell of her helmet.

"You're not real...no face."

"That's my ranger helmet," Alice answered. "Lemme get it off." She opted not to power down. Instead, she reached up and undid the catches that held the helmet in place. As the plastic shell lifted, his fingers sought her face.

His touch was clumsy and awkward but she let him 'read' her face with his fingertips, praying he would finally believe.

"You feel real," he finally whispered. "But the other one felt real...she wasn't."

_What the hell?_ "Dad I'm really here," Alice answered. _Screw it._ "Power down." She let the morph drop away and guided his still groping fingers to the narrow, gold chain around her neck. "Remember this?" She helped his fingers find the tiny ring that hung on it. "You proposed to mom -- in East Mall. You were on crutches. You proposed to me, too -- gave me a ring, just like mom's but 'Alice sized'. That was how you described it."

"A little ring for a little lady..." Tears started to roll down his face. "You are real...why can't I see you?"

Alice pulled him into a gentle hug, silently vowing that if she got her hands on the bastard that had done this to Eric they wouldn't live long enough to regret it. "They've done something to you, dad -- I don't know what. But I'm gonna get you outta here -- you're gonna be OK." 

She shifted a little and Eric clung to her. "Don't go. Don't leave me," he begged.

"I'm not leaving you," Alice answered, "but I need to morph. Once I morph, it's ten minutes until we're outta here completely. Promise." _I hope._

"OK."

He reluctantly let go and allowed her to move away. As quickly as she could, she morphed again. Via the comm. system, she sent, "Ready when you are, Rick."

"Phew!" came the response from Namir.

"Understood, Ali -- expect fireworks in one minute," Rick answered. Then he added, "How is he?"

Alice looked down at Eric, still crouched where she'd left him. "Not good, Rick. So very 'not good' I don't know where to start."

"OK. Fill us in later."

Even as he said it, alarms started to go off in the building.

{LIA detects a series of fire alerts in progress -- suggest...}

_That's Rick's distraction -- it's computer phantoms,_ Alice responded, cutting LIA off. Aloud, she said, "OK, Dad, time to go." Without waiting for him to respond, Alice bent over and gently took hold of him. "Up you get." Even as gentle as she was, though, he still grimaced in pain as she helped him stand up. "Guess you've been stuck like that for a while, huh?"

"A week. I think." 

She hadn't expected an answer. That he gave one meant he was more aware of his surroundings now; that it was coherent gave Alice cause for a certain amount of relief. _Maybe he really will be OK._ "Can you walk?"

"If you guide me."

Alice nodded. "Of course." So saying, she helped him put his arm around her shoulders. "I'm not gonna let you go, 'kay?"

"OK."

Carefully, Alice led Eric towards the door of the cell. _LIA can you pinpoint Rick and Namir's location and direct me there?_

{Yes.}

"Watch out -- the door's kinda wrecked," Alice warned aloud while LIA worked.

"Just tell me how high to lift my legs. I'll manage."

Despite the situation, Alice found herself smiling as she did just that. Eric was starting to sound more and more like himself. Maybe his sight would follow... Once out in the hallway, progress was better. The further they went, the better Eric's balance became and the faster they were able to move. She knew this had to still be hurting him, but a sidelong glance told her his jaw was clenched, swallowing back any reaction to the pain.

Almost as if sensing her concern, he said, "Worry about physical damage later. Get us outta here now."

Alice started to chuckle at the response, but as they rounded a corner, the laughter died on her lips.

"Well, well. A touching scene."

Standing, in the middle of the hallway, was a tall, thin, completely bald man, backed up by ranks of cyclobots and, to Alice's horror, someone who looked exactly like her. _But the other one felt real and wasn't._ The words suddenly made sense.

"Ali?" Eric murmured softly. "What's going on?"

"Company," Alice answered.

"I have to commend your efforts," the man continued. "You really have managed to do outstandingly well -- such a pity it wasn't good enough."

Alice angled herself so that she was partially shielding Eric. _LIA if you have any suggestions about this, now would be a good moment for them._

"Get them!"

The cyclobots surged forwards.

"Shit!" Alice pivoted, kicking out at the on-coming robots, connecting with one and driving them back momentarily.

"Ali let go of me and fight them," Eric advised. "Don't worry about me."

Then he took the decision out of her hands by shrugging out of her hold. _Easy for you to say, dad -- I'm not you; I'm not John..._ But there wasn't another option. She moved in front of Eric's position. They weren't going to get their hands on him again without having to go through her first.

{LIA has options.}

_Well good -- what are they?_ Alice asked, even as she tried to put into practice some of the defensive drills Taylor had been teaching her. 

{Surrender.}

_Nothing doing, LIA,_ Alice mentally retorted, punching an encroaching 'bot. _Surrender is not an option._

{Not to them. Allow LIA to take over.}

_You can do that?_

{Yes.}

_Then do it._

For a moment everything blurred and her perceptions shifted. Clarity returned a split second later, but not as a visual image. Instead, she 'saw' everything in terms of vectors and co-ordinates on a three dimensional, red grid. It was LIA's view of the world, and it might have been frightening, but her perception of fear had shifted. Fear was a human emotion. Emotion was irrelevant. Only the objective mattered.

The hostiles closed in. Each hostile was prioritised and tagged on the grid. Then LIA/Alice started to methodically take out the robots, moving from target to target with precision. No movement was wasted. Each punch and kick was measured for the greatest effect.

"I don't believe this!" The lead hostile -- the bald man -- was dumbfounded.

"{Believe it, jackass,}" LIA/Alice retorted as the last cyclobot hit the floor.

Threat sensors indicated the lead hostile had drawn a blaster. Energy readings showed it was set on kill. The vector indicated the aim was not at her but at Eric. Objective was to protect Eric. LIA/Alice dived forwards, flowing across the space between her position and that of the lead hostile as energy readings indicated a build up of charge in the blaster. Lead hostile was firing. Chance of preventing serious or fatal wounding was minimal. Objective was to be achieved at any cost.

The blast struck her, full on the chest. Fiery pain spread out from where the blast hit her, but LIA/Alice shunted the pain aside. Pain was a human feeling. It was irrelevant. Stopping lead hostile was paramount.

"I...but...you..."

Then LIA/Alice bulled into him, slamming him into the wall. There was a vague 'ouf' sound as the breath was forced from his lungs on impact. Then his head snapped back against the wall with a sickening thud and he went limp in her grip. Sensors indicated he was dead.

"Ali?"

LIA/Alice turned at the sound of the voice. The clone was standing beside Eric; a blaster aimed at Eric's head.

"{Step away from him,}" LIA/Alice ordered.

"Make me," the clone retorted.

A millisecond was all it took to analyse the situation. Energy readings indicated the blaster was set to stun. The risk of it going off and causing permanent damage was negligible. One second was all it took for LIA/Alice to draw her own blaster and fire it. The aim was perfect. The clone never stood a chance.

"Ali?" Rick. Approaching.

"Alice?" Namir.

"Holy shit!" Rick.

"A---alice?" Eric.

Everything wavered for a moment before shifting back to normal. Rick and Namir were standing, both morphed, in the hallway, just beyond her in one direction. The thin man was in a heap of dead flesh at her feet. The clone was a mess of pinkish goo beside Eric. There were remnants of cyclobots everywhere. 

"I did this?" 

Then a wave of pain and exhaustion hit her. The ground seemed to suddenly be getting closer. _I think I'm going to faint..._ And then everything went black.

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED...


	10. Unsure

Unsure

For a second, Rick was rooted to the spot. He just couldn't take in the scene; couldn't comprehend that Alice was the source of this destruction. 

"I did this?" she whispered.

Something about the simple sentence provided him with a warning and he was moving forwards to catch her, even as her knees buckled. She demorphed in his arms, already out cold.

"Holy..." Namir breathed. "Is...is she OK?"

"I don't know," Rick snapped. "We need to get out of here."

"Is...who's there?"

The desperate, almost nervous, query pulled a fragment of Rick's attention away from Alice who was already starting to come round. He looked up at Eric and felt his guts turn to ice water as he saw the milky-white eyes. _He's blind -- they've blinded him!_ Fresh anger boiled up. _Justice is too good for these bastards._ Over the comm. he said, "Nam -- grab Eric. We're getting out of here, **now**." Aloud, he called, "It's Rick Collins."

"Rick?! What...where's Alice? Is she OK?"

Rick glanced down in time to see Alice's eyes flutter open although exhaustion and confusion filled them. "She will be." _I think...hope..._ He gathered her gently into his arms and stood up just as the Blue Ranger reached Eric. "We're getting out now."

Namir took hold of Eric's forearm. "Watch your step, sir."

"Who...?"

"Namir Drake," Namir replied.

"Proper introductions later," Rick cut in. "Let's get the hell out of here first."

~*~

Al heard the sirens start up and judged that was probably the 'kids' making their escape. Moments later, the sound of feet pounding against the sun-baked hillside suggested that the searchers were being recalled, which meant the kids would be making their escape under fire. A glance in Rob's direction told him the same thought had occurred to him.

__

"Think we're clear?" Rob mouthed.

Al nodded. _"C'mon."_

They started to move just as the sounds of blaster fire erupted into the late afternoon air from the other side of the hill.

That settled the matter. Al raced to the top of the hill, drawing his chronoblaster as he went. Sure enough, there was a lumbering transport making its way out of the TOI compound, and coming under heavy fire from all around.

It had been a long time since Al had been involved in a light-fight like this but it didn't mean he'd forgotten any of the tactics. Dropping flat to provide as small a target as possible, he started to rapidly fire on the guards who were firing on the transport. Many of them were actually out of range but the aim wasn't so much to shoot them as to give them somewhere else to think about.

Beside him, Rob cursed softly as return fire chewed up the earth inches in front of him. "Next time, Al, pick somewhere with more cover!"

"We're on an open hillside," Al retorted, flinching as a shot passed just above his head. "There is no cover."

The transport was picking up speed now and at least one person in it was managing to return fire.

"Any ideas on how they're going to pick us up?" Rob asked.

"They'll find a way," Al answered. _I hope..._

~*~

From the voluble cursing, Rick judged that the last shot had come rather too close.

"I need a gunner up here!" Namir yelled when he'd finished cursing.

Rick glanced in Alice's direction. She'd fainted again only moments after he'd gently set her down in the back of the transport and although she seemed to be coming round once more, she was still more or less out of it.

"We haven't got anyone else, Nam," Rick shot back.

"Yes you have." 

"What?!" Rick stared at Eric, wondering if he'd heard the other man correctly. Over the noise of the battle and the complaints of the transport's armoured body shell, Eric's voice had been almost inaudible.

"Rick, give me your blaster," Eric stated, infusing a subtle air of command to his still quiet words. "I'm blind. I'm not deaf. You tell me which way to point the thing and I can fire here. Then you go forward and cover Nam."

"Rick, I **really** could use some help!" Namir yelped at that moment.

__

Damnit! "Here." Rick pressed his blaster into Eric's hand, then guided him into position. "You're firing back at the prison so you don't need to worry about hitting anything vital."

Eric nodded. "I can do it."

Rick watched for a second and was subsequently shocked to see two absolutely dead-on accurate shorts take out two of the guards firing on the rear of the transport.

"Get going!" Eric ordered -- and there was no mistaking it now, Commander Myers was in residence, full force.

Rick did as he was ordered and moved up to the front of the transport, taking Namir's blaster and starting to offer more suppression fire, this time, helping to clear a path before them.

"What the hell...?!" Namir exclaimed.

"Long story," Rick answered. "Tell you when we get out of this."

~*~

Rob cursed again and spat out a mouthful of earth. This was turning into a suicide mission. Even if the transport made it up the remaining two hundred yards of hill, there was almost no way it was going to get them to their own transport, which had been left about a mile away.

"C'mon Nam," Al muttered under his breath.

Rob saw a burst of fire suddenly triggered off from the front of the vehicle. A little tiny piece of the worry eased from the pit of his stomach. At least they'd now got suppression fire from both front and rear -- it gave them a fighting chance.

But was it enough?

Searing pain erupted in his shoulder as a blaster bolt finally tagged him. His left arm went numb almost instantly. _Nerve damage,_ he found himself identifying absently, even as he continued to fire, albeit more clumsily for the lack of effective bracing. _C'mon kids -- you can do this..._

~*~

Alice was distantly aware of what was going on -- distantly aware that it had some importance to her -- but she couldn't bring herself to have the energy to care. It seemed like far too much effort.

She knew she was lying in the back of some sort of transport, but there was a confusing memory of being held by Rick. She'd felt safe then. Safer than she'd felt in a long time. Not since she'd been a really little kid when dad had rescued her from Dirk.

Dad.

Was dad OK?

Rick would make sure he was. She could trust Rick. He wouldn't let her down. He'd take care of everything...

The transport gave a violent shudder as it set down which brought Alice a little closer to full consciousness. There was a rustling and a series of thumps that sounded confusing enough that she managed to force her eyes to open. She realised it was Al and Rob climbing in with her and...what was Dad doing with a blaster?!

But the energy of that one thought alone sent her sagging back against the metal floor, even as the transport started to lift off again.

"Nam get us going!"

"I'm goin', Dad, you gimme some more cover!"

"On it, Nam...Geeze Rob why didn't you say you'd been hit!"

"I'm all right..."

"Alex?"

The transport gave a lurch at that point, before anyone had a chance to respond to Eric's query. There was at least one bitten off curse and Alice found herself being flung into the side of the transport.

"Nam what the fuck was that?"

"Sorry."

"We're clear."

Rick's observation allowed her to relax and consciousness started to slip away from her again. She was dimly aware of the transport setting down again. Of someone -- a Rick-shaped someone, she suspected -- picking her up and carrying her to another, more comfortable transport. Then of a quicker and far less rocky journey beginning. And then the darkness overtook her once more.

~*~

Kimberly paced.

There was nothing else she could do, so she paced.

The room was exactly thirteen and a half paces long.

Waiting had never been her strongest suit, and given what was resting on **this** particular batch of waiting -- it was currently killing her.

At Lucas' behest, Carmen had managed to get an adjournment until the following Monday. After a brief discussion, Lucas had opted to go to the task force's base to await results, taking Wes, Carmen and Kimberly with him. Marissa would -- and could -- hold the fort as far as Covert Operations was concerned and Lucas felt -- and Kimberly certainly hadn't disagreed -- it might be better for everyone if they were there when the rescue party returned.

__

Even if it's bad news, Kimberly reflected as she racked up another trip across the work room, _I want to be here. **Have** to be here._

~*~

Carmen's eyes were wide as he finally took a seat in Ops.

"Quite some set up, Major Kendall," he commented.

"It's quite some conspiracy," Lucas answered. "As you're finding out."

"Ye-es." Carmen shook his head. "How long before anything's heard from the rescue team?"

Katie, who was eyeing Carmen with some suspicion, said, "We'll hear when they get back to their shuttle bay." She glanced at the chronometer on the wall just behind Carmen's head. "And that," she added, "should be soon."

~*~

Ven waited in the shuttle, anxiety weighing heavily on her nerves. Their departure slot was at twenty-two hundred hours. It was twenty-one thirty now. If they didn't get back soon, they were going to miss their slot. And missing their slot... Ven shivered. In theory it would mean little more than an extended stay on this side of the Atlantic, but considering that the chances were they would have staged a jail break, the longer they remained here, the better the chances of them being found.

A steady warning tone indicated someone was approaching the shuttle. Ven moved swiftly to look at the monitor, heart in her mouth. Was it them? Or was it someone else? 

Relief was strong when she identified Al and Rob, the leaders of the little party. But relief faded to concern as she saw the way Rob's arm was hanging useless at his side and the field compression bandage on his shoulder. 

Turning, Ven punched the door release and hurried to the entry port.

"What happened?"

Rob gave her a jaundiced look. "I got shot."

"But obviously not in the sense of humour," Ven retorted. "Al -- am I going to get any better sense from you? Rob, sit," she added, directing Rob to one of the couches.

"How about we fill you in once we get going?" Al suggested.

Before Ven could say anything, Namir arrived. He looked exhausted and he was leading a man who could only be Eric Myers. Ven felt her heart sink lower in her chest as he stepped into the lighted passenger compartment of the shuttle. Eric's eyes were milky-white. It wasn't so much the obvious blindness that made the bile rise, but the cause. For his eyes to have gone milky it meant that Hordak had to have been feeding him a steady diet of various drugs for the last two weeks. _Damn he's lucky not to be dead..._

"Ven?" Namir prompted.

"Sorry." Ven shook her head. "Over there, please, Nam -- Eric; glad to have you safe."

A faint smile passed over Eric's face. "Good to be safe."

As Namir led Eric over to the other couch, the final two members of the party entered and Ven felt her heart hit her boots at the sight of Alice, unconscious in Rick's arms.

"What the hell happened?" Ven asked.

~*~

The sound of the comm. terminal making its new message _ding_ was incredibly loud. Katie, who was nearest, looked at the message that had come in.

"It's them," she said. "Do we call Kim?"

"Let's see if it's good news first," Lucas suggested.

"Let's not," said Kimberly from the doorway, her expression unreadable. "I'm a big girl, Lucas."

"I could have told you that," Wes murmured sotto voce.

"OK -- we're all here." Lucas sighed. "Katie -- do the honours."

Katie opened the message. "It's text only," she announced. "From Rob. He says: Mission accomplished. Seven returning. Most no worse for wear. Details on arrival. ETA nineteen hundred."

Kimberly made a funny sort of noise and would have fallen but for Wes' sudden intervention.

"It's OK, Kim -- he's OK..." Wes murmured, gently leading her to an empty seat. "It's all going to be OK."

~*~

Kimberly knew it was good news. Knew it was perhaps the best news they could have received. She'd been so tense, so concerned, so wound up...and now it was over. Less than an hour and it would all be over.

And she found herself crying.

He was OK.

Eric was OK.

Eric would be home soon.

This nightmare was over.

~*~

Rick watched on as Alice slept on one of the couches in the shuttle's passenger compartment. Simple exhaustion was all it was -- according to Ven, at any rate. Alice's blood sugar level had been fractionally low, which Ven had corrected, but beyond that, the best medicine was sleep.

What the hell had she done?

His mind kept drifting back to the carnage in that hallway. There had to have been the remains of at least twenty cyclobots. How on earth had she taken out that many robots on her own? At first, Rick had assumed Eric had helped, but he hadn't. He'd said as much. The massacre had to be Alice's doing. And while Rick knew Alice had been receiving training from Taylor Earhardt, he also knew that the level of destruction wasn't something that she should have been capable of. He doubted that even John and Eric fighting in tandem would have managed it.

So what had Alice done?

"It's tough."

Rick jumped. He'd completely forgotten about the occupant of the other couch. Looking up, he realised Eric was 'looking' straight at him. "What is?" he managed to answer.

The expression on Eric's face clearly said 'give me a break'. "Rick, you're not exactly subtle. You're in love with Alice." 

Rick stared at Eric, trying to work out whether to be embarrassed or whether to fear for his life. "How..."

"Short memory -- you all but told me that two weeks ago," Eric cut in.

"Oh."

"Look." Eric sighed. "If you really care about her -- and I think you do -- then I'm not going to pull the over-protective dad shit I pulled on some of her high school boyfriends. I'm not gonna need to."

There was no response Rick could make to that statement.

"But one thing **you** are gonna need to do is learn that you can't protect her. You can't stop her from being who she is -- even when being who she is lands her up in trouble." Eric sighed. "It'll just give you ulcers and heartache if you try."

"I guess." Rick sighed and looked down at Alice once more. "It's..."

"Tough," Eric finished. "I know."

~*~

Rob quietly moved away from the door into the passenger cabin of the shuttle. From the little snatch of the conversation he'd caught, it was a private one -- and he had no desire to interrupt. Instead, he returned to the cockpit and sank down on the uncomfortable jump seat he'd intended to leave.

Ven lifted an eyebrow.

"Didn't want to intrude on a family moment," Rob said.

"Oh."

There was an awkward silence.

Rob glanced at Namir and Al, seated at the controls of the shuttle. Namir was fast asleep in the co-pilot's seat completely exhausted by the trials and tribulations of his first stint as the Blue Vengeance Ranger, while Al was concentrating on what he was doing. Like that, he was all but deaf and blind to the rest of the world.

"No, I haven't told him yet," said Ven softly. "It's been too crazy. He's had enough problems...he doesn't need mine too."

Rob shook his head. "You'll have to tell him, sooner or later."

"Make it later." Ven's expression closed and Rob took the hint.

~*~

John nodded good morning to the temporary receptionist as he entered SGHQ. Gina was now the only officially signed on member of the SG administration team to not be sick. At least half of the over all Guardian roster was also affected, and John knew that it wasn't just them.

All around Silverhills, and in neighbouring counties too, businesses were being forced to close because numbers of their staff were ill with this mysterious virus.

__

And the frightening thing is, John mused as he headed up to the admin office, _no-one's getting better._

"John?"

The voice pulled him from his thoughts. Looking up, he saw Lexia and JJ both waiting for him at the top of the stairs. _Oh damn._

"Can we talk to you?" JJ asked.

John sighed. Just the conversation he didn't want to have... "Guess I don't have too much choice."

~*~

As he brought the shuttle in to land, Al wasn't terribly surprised to see a small welcoming committee waiting for them. It looked like everyone barring Trip and Nadira was present -- which was understandable. He just hoped that Wes would be too focussed on Eric to pay much attention to him.

He snorted softly. Would it matter? Eric had figured it out in thirty seconds flat; only Namir's attempts at avoiding a rocky outcrop and the last of the guards had spared him from having to think up a lie. _Which would have done me so much good._ He snorted again. 

"Keep that up, you'll burst a blood vessel," said Ven severely.

"What's up?" Rob asked.

"Tell you later," Al answered. "We're back." So saying, the shuttle gently touched down on the ferrocrete landing pad. "Last stop -- everybody out."

~*~

Kimberly waited at the edge of the landing pad, breathless anticipation and a nameless fear filling her stomach. She knew that there were other people present, but her whole attention was trained on the slowly landing shuttle. Her eyes were fixed on the exit hatch, almost willing it to open. Finally, with a muted thud, the shuttle touched down, and even as the turbines shut down, the exit hatch slid open and the ramp extended.

First out of the shuttle came Rick and Alice, Alice obviously leaning heavily on Rick. Kimberly felt a pang as she saw how tired Alice was and how much of a struggle it was for her to walk down the exit ramp. She had a suspicion that if she hadn't been present, Alice might have permitted Rick to carry her.

But then Alice's condition -- and Rick's reaction to it -- dropped from Kimberly's mind completely at the sight of the next two people out of the shuttle.

"Eric!"

She was peripherally aware of the fact that someone -- Namir, was it? -- leading Eric out of the shuttle, but it couldn't hold her back. She was across the landing pad and up the ramp, flinging her arms around him.

"Eric..."

His arms tentatively wrapped themselves around her, returning her embrace. "Kim, God..."

"You're back." She kissed him. "That's what counts."

~*~

Ven watched the reunion with a pang of regret. Partly for herself, but mostly for what was still to come. Somewhat to her surprise, she found an arm being draped around her shoulders. Looking round, she realised Rob was standing beside her.

"It'll be OK," he said, gently squeezing her shoulders.

"Hope so," Ven replied. "C'mon. There's stuff to do."

She and Rob started to make their own way off the shuttle, but as she reached the foot of the ramp, her eyes fell on one of the members of the welcoming committee. One who was standing well to the back of the party. One who even as she watched, was pulling a small controller device out of his pocket.

"No! Stop him!"

But there was a brilliant flash of light, and it was too late.

* * *

__

TO BE CONTINUED IN TIME LOST...


End file.
